


Running Through the Rain

by ponderinfrustration



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-04-06 19:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 65,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14063775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration
Summary: Pharoga Western AU. Fahim is a lawman charged with bringing in Erik. He unexpectedly falls in love, but before they can be together he is badly wounded and other forces come into play. The question is who shot him? And why? Who is the next target? And what will Erik do?





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> This is a western AU that happened because of a prompt that lollians sent me on Tumblr. I have no clear plot, but I do have a collection of things that I want to happen and some pretty neat OCs (if I do say so myself) that I plan to include. In fact the fic may best be described as a record of Erik and the Daroga's time together, wandering through the American West sometime post-1875. Other PotO characters will appear as the story progresses.
> 
> Title comes from the song of the same name by Chris LeDoux.

Fahim will be the first to admit that he has taken an easier pace ever since he caught up to the elusive Erik, surname uncertain. Possibly Destler, though Delacroix, Devereaux, De Stacpoole and De La Fontaine have all been bandied about as possibilities. Something that begins with a ‘D’ and sounds vaguely French. That much Fahim _does_ know.

It must be nearly a month since he left Fort Griffin in search of the man. He was not alone then. Henry and Warren were with him, and so was Pete Fisher of the livery, with Tom Elder left in charge of the office. By rights it should have been a bigger posse, but most of the men he would have called on had already left with Marshal Comerford ten days earlier. The only reason Henry and Warren had not joined _that_ posse was the bleeding that had freshly awoken in Henry’s lungs after a 36-hour poker game. Carried to his room half-conscious by the men he had recently fleeced, he spent five days in bed after he got the coughing under control and Warren had refused to leave him for anything longer than the time it took to buy more whiskey, partially out of worry, partially out of the knowledge that if he was left alone too long then Henry would attempt escape (Fahim can appreciate both of their concerns). By the time Henry was back on his feet, the Marshal and fifteen good men had already left, with Fahim in charge of the office. Then the infamous Erik had shot three people over a dispute with a faro game, and it was time to get another group together.

Things had gone well, for three days. Fahim had picked up the track easily enough and they had followed it over the river. Then Pete’s horse got snakebit and died, and Pete turned back on foot. Another week, and the trail had petered out, when a rumble of thunder on a clear day spooked Henry’s horse and threw him. (As long as he lives, Fahim will always remember the sickening crunch when Henry hit the ground, the way his own heart pounded, certain he was dead, the way Warren half-fell off his horse in the rush to get to him and roll him over. In the event, Henry was only winded, but the very memory makes Fahim shiver. So close. _Too_ close.) The impact restarted the bleeding in his lungs, and in between gagging and choking he insisted he was all right. _Bound to be some…minor vessels torn_ and _not arterial_ , but, in spite of Henry’s being a medical man and thus knowledgeable about his own condition, Warren was little comforted by his words and insisted that they double back for the line shack they’d stopped at earlier, belonging to the DH ranch. Between the two of them, he and Fahim had bundled Henry up onto Warren’s horse (Henry grumbling the whole time about how it was _completely unnecessary_ because he was _perfectly fine_ ), then Warren climbed up behind him to be sure he wouldn’t fall off and they turned back.

It was Fahim’s own decision to keep going. He had a feeling that if he just kept heading west he’d find Erik, and his mother had always told him to trust his feelings. And damn him, but the man had committed murder over a card game, and had outstanding warrants against his name in several counties, and Henry had gotten half-killed over him. Not a chance was Fahim going to give up on bringing him in.

He rode on with no trail to follow, working on instinct, letting the Fates lead him on. And while his horse (Darius has always been highly reliable) picked his way over the land, Fahim’s mind wandered over what he would do with Erik himself. Try to corner him, disarm him. Erik is a fast draw, as he proved back at the gaming tables. Best to try and get him _before_ that stage comes along. And his thoughts would flicker back to Henry, coughing blood, to Warren supporting him, murmuring in his ear, and a twisting mass of anxiety, longing, and envy would worm its way through Fahim’s heart again. What those two have—

What those two have was not allowed to matter. Not in the face of the job at hand.

Two days passed after the doubling back of Henry and Warren, then two more days, and two more, and almost before Fahim realised it a whole week had gone by, and his untethered feeling of being on the right track proved out. He found the elusive Erik playing poker in a run-down saloon in a two-bit town whose name he was too tired to learn. The butt of a pistol to the back of his head while he was still unawares, and Erik went down bleeding. And then, with the help of two men who had lost a good deal of money to Erik, it was out with him, tie him onto the back of his horse before he came back to his senses, and off again, back over the territory they had already crossed.

He would have liked to have given Darius time to rest after the journey, but doing that would have risked losing Erik again.

For three days Erik rambled, mumbling nonsense in a variety of languages, breaking out into high strange laughter. It was a struggle not to look at him, at his shining gold eyes and misshapen nose and his pitted scarred face, the warped lips. He has seen the crude sketch of the face on wanted posters, has heard it described, has glimpsed it in smoky saloons even before the shooting, and it is not exactly the sort of face a body can forget. But to be faced with it every day— For the words from those lips to be incomprehensible— A chill in Fahim’s blood made him shiver each time their eyes met, even if Erik’s tended to roll away again after a second or two. And with that laughter—how could he be a man, and not simply some sort of haint sent to torment the living? How can anything like that be flesh and blood?

(The blood from his head wound dried rusty brown down the side of his face, made him look like a demon from one of the old stories Fahim’s grandfather told him as boy just to unsettle him and hear him squeal before drawing a laugh by twisting the terrifying tale back to absurdity and innocence. The first river they came to, Fahim washed the blood away, and Erik’s grin was lopsided.)

Fahim was just getting anxious over him, anxious that he could manage to slip his bonds, anxious that his murmurings were simply ramblings but a spell of some sort, and Fahim has never been superstitious but when faced with something like that… But there was no need for the anxieties because Erik quieted, and those disconcerting eyes cleared to piercing. They passed a peaceful day, riding at a decent clip. Then that night, Erik asked, softly, what he was wanted for this time.

(And with the softness of his voice, Fahim’s first thought was, _so he is a man after all_.)

“Two counts of murder, one of serious injury. If the man hasn’t died since _._ ” _And he was gutshot, so odds are he has._ But Fahim didn’t add that bit. One more death would not change the sentence, and the man may look like some sort of a wraith but it would likely be crueller to specify three men killed than two, might trouble him more.

“They’ll hang me.” The words were flat, a simple expression of fact, and Fahim looked at him trussed beside the campfire, but the mangled face betrayed no emotion.

“Most likely.”

To that there was no reply. Erik just sat, staring into the fire that made his eyes glow.

Fahim did not sleep that night.

Another two days passed in silence between the two, until a rainstorm forced them to huddle close or else die of wet and cold. (He has never been a religious man, but Fahim will testify to the end of his days that that rainstorm was sent by divinity.) Fahim had set his guns and knives a good distance away, and made certain that Erik wasn’t armed (even removing one small throwing knife from the bottom of his boot that he had somehow missed on his early frisk of the man). And he was still well tied.

Afterwards, it is more than Fahim can manage to decipher what happened. Perhaps it was the heat of their two bodies pressed close, or perhaps it was the shared bottle of whiskey that Henry had stuck in Fahim’s saddlebags when they first rode out (“best there be one that I not have, just in case”), or perhaps it was the longing, the aching longing deep in his chest that has twisted at him ever since he rode out of Fort Griffin, and long before in truth, for there to be _someone_ , someone to touch him, to hold him (to love him), the longing made all the worse by the memory of the tenderness with which Warren treated Henry, lying behind him at night so that he would be propped up to keep the pressure off his lungs, lightly stroking the hair from his face. And Fahim has known for years what lies between them, though they have never said it to him in so many words and he has never asked, but there is a difference in knowing it and seeing it, and the night that Henry had a particularly bad coughing fit that left him weak lying back against Warren, and Warren twined their fingers and lightly brushed his lips to Henry’s forehead when he thought Fahim was asleep, sent a bolt of such longing through Fahim he thought he might die then and there.

Whatever the cause of it, one factor or a culmination, in the darkness listening to Erik’s soft breathing beside him, it simply seemed right, simply seemed natural.

And Erik must have thought the same, because when Fahim’s lips met his he did not protest, his lips trembling for only the barest moment before parting for Fahim’s tongue. No hesitation, no questions. And though his hands were tied, his fingers curled around Fahim’s own, pulled him closer, and in the darkness of the night they held each other close.

(And that night has not been their last. And their kisses have not grown any less sweet.)

Each day Fort Griffin gets closer and closer. Their pace is slow, their stops frequent, and Fahim lies to himself that it is because the horses need to rest but he does not believe his own attempts at justification. A faint smile crossing Erik’s lips makes Fahim’s heart flutter. He dare not give voice to the twisting feelings inside, to the way he feels light as air each time their eyes meet. It is wrong for a lawman like him to feel such things for a wanted man. However right it feels in the still hours before dawn.

But silently—silently he has resolved what he will do. Slip into town, check Henry and Warren are well, gather what things he wants, and slip back out again. But he will not tell Erik. Not just yet. There are still so very many miles to go. And for such an important decision, for both of them, he will not have it made on impulse.


	2. Isn't It A Lovely Night?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from a song by The Decemberists

They make camp when they still have half a day’s ride left before Fort Griffin. It is a warm evening, the sunset turning the sky ochre and vermillion and all the shades in between. Fahim’s heart flutters to see the same shade of gold as Erik’s eyes up there in the heavens. Two and a half weeks of seeing them every hour, every day, and still those eyes are as ethereal as they were the first time he saw them.

The sun dips below the horizon. The vibrant colours bleed to navy and bruised purple, and Fahim turns to Erik, and takes his hands.

He has tied and untied many ropes in his life, for different reasons. But never have his fingers been so nimble loosening the knots, never has the moment that the ropes slipped free felt so blessed.

Erik frowns at him, brow furrowed beneath the brim of his hat. “What are you—”

But Fahim cuts him off, lays one finger against those twisted lips. “Sssshhh. We have tonight.” And silently he thinks, _I trust you. I have learned to trust you. And any fears are ones that can be set aside, so we can have this._

Erik must surely see it in his eyes, because he nods and the lines on his face smooth away. “And,” his voice catches, ever so slightly, “and tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we’ll see.” Tomorrow. That nebulous word. Fahim doesn’t want to think it, pushes it away. What does tomorrow matter in the face of tonight? And he slips his hand around to the nape of Erik’s neck, draws his head down, and their lips are gentle as they meet. “Let’s forget about the future, forget about the past. And just exist.”

Erik nods, hands settling lightly at his hips, fingertips brushing his belt, and his voice is faintly hoarse. “I’ve wanted to hold you like this for weeks.”

Fahim smiles into his mouth, arms slipping down, pulling him closer. “You are not the only one.”

* * *

 

Afterwards, they lie together under the stars, bare skin to bare skin and blankets cocooning them. Erik nuzzles into Fahim’s hair, fingers lightly trailing down his side, and sighs.

“What are you planning to do tomorrow?” The question come back around again. And surely Erik is expecting him to say, _turn you in to the Marshal, of course_ , or something to that effect. But instead he smiles into Erik’s chest, kisses him over his heart, and whispers,

“Turn in my badge. Collect a few things I’d like to keep. Check in with Henry and Warren.” He has already told Erik about them, about their closeness, and Henry’s illness, and the way they insisted on joining him when he left Fort Griffin in spite of it or rather, the way Henry insisted on joining them despite Warren’s protests). He couldn’t help talking about it, one night shortly after they first kissed, needed to get it all out into the air, and Erik had listened quietly, his wrists still bound, and kissed him softly on the cheek. “And then ride back out again.”

Erik’s fingers still. “And what about me?” His voice is oddly faint, a touch forlorn, and it catches at Fahim’s heart because how can he not see? But it is all still so new, so very new to the both of them, and perhaps he should not be so surprised.

He keeps his voice light, and half-smiles as he says, “I expect I’ll catch up with you somewhere around here.”

A half-laugh, more like a huff of air, and Erik gasps, “My, you are full of surprises.”

Fahim shifts, so that he is looking down at Erik’s face, pale and silvered in the light of the moon. “It keeps things exciting. Now,” he smiles, and brushes his lips against Erik’s, “where were we?”

* * *

 

They sleep little that night, simply whisper, and touch, and kiss. And with the coming of dawn they help each other to dress. “I assume this means I can have my guns back,” Erik says, groggy from their activities in the night as he straightens his sleeves. His guns are a pair of fine pearl-handled revolvers, clearly expensive, and he wears one in a shoulder holster under his coat, and the other at his hip. The very thought of his nimble fingers buckling the gunbelt around his slim waist makes fresh desire pool in the pit of Fahim’s stomach, but he swallows it down and fights to keep his voice steady. Now is not the time for such thoughts.

“And your knives. I’d really prefer if you didn’t use them, but probably safer that you have them than not.”

Erik regards him, chewing his lower lip. “How long have you been planning this?”

“Since a couple of days after we first—”

And Erik nods, holds a hand up to silence him, and the creases around his mouth suggest that he has formed a plan of his own. (When did Fahim learn to read the shiftings in his face?) “Well, I think it best if you stay in town a couple of nights, instead of—instead of resigning straightaway and leaving again. You don’t want to give them any reason to be suspicious of you.”

There is truth in his words, but Fahim would prefer to be away from Erik for as short a time as possible, and the thought of lingering in town just for the sake of it leaves a sour taste in his mouth. “And what about you?”

Now it is Erik’s turn to smile. “I’ll lay low. Keep off the trails and rest up a bit. How about we rendezvous here at sunset in two days?”

It sounds like a plan, and though he is still wary of leaving Erik alone — the man did kill two people after all, and probably three — Fahim agrees, and they part ways after another kiss. He mounts up and rides away, pointing Darius towards town, his heart too full but his chest oddly hollow. And even though he knows he needs to have his story in order for when he reaches town, knows he will be asked about Erik, knows that the story of his apprehension may well have filtered in to Comerford by now with the way news travels out here, his thoughts keep wandering back, to the night spent in Erik’s arms, to the kisses they shared, to the words they have not spoken though Fahim feels them inside, weighing oddly heavy and light at once.

He pushes Darius on, a harder pace than he has ridden in weeks. No point wasting time out here when he could be making his presence known in town, could be making his time there as long as possible so as to be less suspicious. Erik is right on that point, after all.

First stop will be the Marshal’s office, deliver a fake report of events. He had Erik, but when Erik came to his senses he jumped him in the night and escaped. Fahim searched for him, found the trail and lost it then, tired and aching, afraid of doing in his horse, he decided to return. A simple tale. Best to keep it simple so he is less likely to be caught in a lie.

Then he will retire to his rooms and sleep. Visit the barber after he wakes. The story will have travelled around town. Track down Henry in whatever saloon he has fetched up in, and act as if everything is normal, pretending all the time that his heart is not hiding somewhere half a day’s ride away, laying low and keeping off the trails.

It cannot be so very difficult. Can it?


	3. Hurts Like Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for reference to stab wounds

Marshal Ben Comerford is relieved to see Fahim when, heartsick and aching to the bone, he steps into the office, fresh from rubbing down and stabling Darius, still covered in trail dust. Comerford looks up from his papers, scrubs a hand through his hair, and smiles, the creases around his eyes running a little deeper than usual. “You certainly are a sight for sore eyes,” he says, “pull up a chair.”

And Fahim obliges, settling in the chair opposite, one leg folded over the other, hat on his knees. Before he can speak a single word, Comerford is proffering a bottle of whiskey from the drawer, filling two glasses.

“You look as if you could use a dose. I’d just begun to wonder if he’d got you out there. Good to see that he didn’t.”

Fahim accepts the offered whiskey, sips it. It burns his throat as he swallows, and the heat of it in his chest is enough to dull the ache in his heart for Erik, if only for a moment. “Thank you, Marshal.”

Comerford nods, then settles his elbows on the desk and steeples his fingers. “Seeing as you are here and he is not, I assume he slipped through your fingers. Tell me all about it.”

If there is any thread of anxiety in Fahim’s words as he lays out the whole tale he has invented, Comerford does not seem to catch it. He nods along as Fahim details coming across Erik in that two-bit saloon — always best to keep a grain of truth in the story — and though Fahim’s heart is pounding almost enough to leave him breathless, he keeps his voice steady, throwing a thunderstorm into the story for luck (“must be about ten days ago now.”) Such things coalesce and dissipate out on the range all the time. Who’s to say whether there was or not? A bolt of lightning right beside him, and Darius threw him. He woke when the storm had cleared, head throbbing, and found Erik gone, disappeared like some phantom with the clouds, and Darius lamed. Lay up a couple of days with his aching head, gave the tenderness in Darius’ leg time to go down, and came on back at an easy pace.

“I didn’t want to put any more stress on his leg,” he says, to credit his actions, “but he’s steady on it now and the heat is gone from the muscle.”

And Comerford takes the story, simply accepts it, and confesses that he had no better luck after his man, even with a whole posse behind him. (Fahim might almost feel guilty for deceiving him, if it were not for the sake of Erik.) He just admonishes him to be more careful in future (“I will, Marshal.” A slight laugh. “That headache was something awful.”), and suggests that he go down to the Chinese baths to clean up before going to bed.

“I can’t imagine that Mrs Cummings would be too pleased with you bringing all that dust into her boarding house.”

It is only after, when he is soaking in the warm bath water, that Fahim allows himself a moment of feeling relieved. At least his story has passed the Marshal.

Sunset is coming on again by the time he is ready to leave the baths, freshly cleaned and his hair combed back. It has grown out more than he usually wears it with the length he was out of town, and what was stubble is making the beginnings of a very fine beard. He briefly entertains an evening call on the barber, and then decides that his own vanity can wait until morning. One more night bearded and hairy will hardly harm him now. And besides, at least he’s cleaner than he was.

Even his clothes are clean, now, after he swapped the sweat-soaked dusty rags he was wearing for the tidier ones that he’d left with the laundry before he left town. It is more civilized than he’s felt all month. What would Erik think to see him now?

Erik. Erik. The whole day has turned around since he left him, from the mist of dawn to the creeping purple darkness of dusk. Was it really only this morning that he left him? Already he feels as distant, as insubstantial, as if he were half the world away, and Fahim’s fingers tingle for to grasp his, to twine with them and pull him close and hold him, just hold him. He would stretch up, and press a kiss lightly to the corner of his twisted lip, and Erik would snake an arm around his waist and pull him so that they would be standing flush, front to front, silhouetted against the sky as if they were the only two—

A whoop from somewhere to his left, one of the saloons, shatters the fantasy, and Fahim sighs. He cannot entertain such dreams, not now. Not when he needs to convince the town that Erik got the better of him out on the range.

He has two choices. The first, to retire to bed. To lie awake in the darkness dreaming about Erik, wondering about him out there alone, longing for him, aching for him, desire coiled tight beneath his navel so that he cannot sleep for thinking of him. The second, to distract himself. Find Henry, who is probably either playing poker or dealing faro if he is not laid up with his lungs, and watch him while he smiles between coughs and manages to fleece whoever he plays. Or split a bottle between him and Warren and whoever may be at hand and get some stories going. Something, anything, so that he does not feel so very full and empty at once.

To bed, or to a saloon? And it is the thought of the crawling loneliness up in his room that makes his decision for him.

He knocks the last of the dust off his hat, and straightens it on his head, smiling in the mirror at the man who looks almost like he did a month ago, eyes the same deep olive as ever, beard the only incongruous thing, and resolves himself.

To a saloon it is.

* * *

 

After checking his usual haunts of the Arkady and the Alameida and turning up no trace of Henry (though he does have to extricate himself from one almost-brawl, and has to bear being bombarded with questions about his time hunting Erik when he is recognized), Fahim finds himself in the Enola, and it is here that he turns up Warren, dealing faro at a table surrounded by teamsters and cowhands, and a couple of soldiers down from the fort. Warren smiles when he catches his eye, and jerks his head for him to come over. It is an effort to muscle his way through the crowd, but seeing Warren smile is enough to assure Fahim that Henry must be well.

It is only now, with some of the tightness gone from his chest, that he realises how worried he has been about him.

“It’s all around town,” Warren says as soon as he’s in earshot, “how the fearsome Erik disappeared in a thunderstorm.” It is all Fahim can do not to blush, and the assembled crowd laughs, but there is a question buried beneath Warren’s words that only Fahim hears. “I reckon you’re lucky to be alive.”

“I reckon I am.”

And Warren frowns slightly, combs his dark hair back from his eyes, then leans in and says, while a cowhand who looks barely old enough to be away from home is deciding how to lay a bet, “Henry wants to see you. He’s in Doc Morris’ office stitching up a gambler. He said if you turned up to go right over.” A smile and nod, before a quick glance down at the young cowhand — still indecisive — then back up, his eyes meeting Fahim’s, more piercingly blue than ever. “We’ll talk later, yeah?” In other words, _we have things to talk about_. The question is whether it’s _what really happened out there?_ or _so help me God but Henry’s never riding out with you again._ Could be either.

Could be both.

But Fahim nods, and smiles, for the benefit of the crowd moreso than for Warren.

“Of course.”

And he takes his leave, pushing his way back out through the crowd. The street is cool after the heat of the saloon, almost chilly, and Fahim shivers for a moment getting used to it. Is Erik cold out there without him? Funny, they never noticed the cold last night.

No. He must not think of Erik. And he certainly must not think of last night. Henry will be looking to see if there’s anything amiss with him, and knowing Henry he’ll just keep at him until he finds out what. The man can be utterly impossible! No. It’s best that he not think about Erik. If he schools himself to impassivity then Henry need never know.

So he works on clearing his mind, on pushing away every thought. To think of nothing is the best solution. If he thinks of nothing then nothing can go wrong.

It is in this mindset that he finds himself standing in front of Doc Morris’ office. Where is Morris that he’s left Henry in charge of looking after things? Henry’s a good doctor, no doubt about that, but Morris is always careful in case he overstrains himself. ( _And rightly so,_ Fahim cannot help thinking. And Warren would be in agreement with him.)

Fahim braces himself before the door, takes off his hat and smooths his hair back so it will sit a little better. Well. He may as well go in. If he dawdles out here Henry could probably sense that too.

He takes a breath, and nods, and opens the door.

And is almost overcome with the metallic stench of blood.

He fights the urge to gag, whips back around and sticks his head out the door to get a full breath of clean air, before facing the room again.

“Oh, please, Fahim. Do shut the door. Neither I nor the eviscerated gentleman here can stand the draft.” The tone is deadpan, but the current of amusement beneath it is classic Henry. “A little more light here, Mister Adams. Thank you. You’re making a fine study. Doctor Morris will be proud.”

Mister Adams looks to be the counterpart of the cowhand playing faro, but the face of youth is deceptive. He is certainly old enough that he could be attending one of the medical schools if he wished, and at Henry’s instruction he brings the lamp a little closer to the laid-out unconscious gambler’s stomach where there is an ugly gash stretching across still oozing blood.

It is more than a little unbalancing to see Henry’s hands stained with someone else’s blood.

For something to say, something other than _are you certain you should be doing this_ (and there are bandages around the patient’s left thigh, around his right arm, one around his head), something other than _what happened to him_ , Fahim says, fighting another wave of nausea at the sight of the bandage around the man’s (a gambler, Warren said) throat, “I didn’t think Warren felt right about dealing faro.” In hindsight, possibly _not_ something to say in front of Mister Adams. Oh but he could hit himself.

A faint smile twitches at Henry’s lip, and Fahim winces to see him pass a needle through one side of the gambler’s wound and out the other. “He doesn’t. But he, that is to say _we_ , have decided that it may be wise to try New Mexico. There are springs over in Las Vegas.” He coughs, and clears his throat, hands remaining steady over the wound. “Apparently there have been good results with cases like mine. He thinks he might open a saloon for all us poor sufferers while I take the cure.” He coughs again and shakes his head, nodding towards a glass beside him half-filled with whiskey. “Would you—”

But Fahim has already anticipated the request, and he takes the glass, presses it to Henry’s lips so he doesn’t need to drop the needle, so he won’t stain the glass, watches as he sips. At his nod, he sets the glass back down again.

“Mister Adams, you may leave if you wish.” Henry’s voice is hoarse from the cough and the whiskey. “The Deputy Marshal will do just fine. Don’t worry I’ll,” a cough, and he waves off Fahim’s offer of the whiskey glass, “I’ll tell Morris you stayed. In half an hour or so can you come back with two more men? And carry him,” he nods to the gambler, “to Miss Buchanan’s place down the street? She has promised to look after him.”

Mister Adams nods, passes the lamp over to Fahim. “I have a few in mind to help, Doc.” Henry bristles at the abbreviation and Adams corrects himself. “Doctor.”

“That’s good.”

Adams slips from the room, closes the door behind him, and they listen to the clack of his boots going down the wooden steps outside. Only now does Fahim appraise Henry fully. The shadows under his eyes, the sickly paleness of his face in the oil light and the faint flush across his cheeks. His clothes hang looser on his thin frame than Fahim remembers, and he swallows the check of anxiety at his heart

 “Do you think it will help? The springs?”

Henry purses his lips but does not look up at him. “Who knows?” For a handful of stretching minutes silence reigns, Fahim caught by the dulled silver glint of the needle passing in and out of the gambler’s flesh, pulling the edges of the wound together into a pucker. He hopes the springs will help. Something surely must.

Henry does not look up, but his voice is soft when he says, “The bleeding lasted a little longer than I expected after I was—after I was thrown. Warren is—he’s afraid, even though he tries to hide it. And I think it best to humour him on this occasion.” And he smiles, but it is plain to see that the smile is forced. “So. We’re going to need some more money, but at least when he’s dealing he can’t badger me about my limits.”

Fahim smiles weakly, but all the time he’s thinking, _he’s right to worry about your limits_.

It is a blatant change of subject, but Fahim welcomes it, when Henry says, his voice stronger than before as if to put all talk of his illness behind them, “Warren had a letter from Alistair while you were away.”

Alistair. It must be two months since he’s heard anything of Alistair. “How is he? And Anna?”

“Austin is suiting them well. Anna is excelling in school, of course, but he’s worried that it being a convent day school,” he stops and grimaces, and Fahim knows by the way he bites his lip that the pain is from his lungs, “she won’t get a proper… _grounding_ in the Latin and mathematics she’ll need if she—if she still wants to study medicine when she’s older.” He pauses to catch his breath, and Fahim knows well enough by now to wait until he’s ready to go on. Eventually, Henry swallows and continues. “He’s half-tempted to move to Houston and dress her as a boy to be sure her education is well-rounded. Etta approves, naturally. Of course, she has always made a very fine man.” Henry smiles, a genuine one this time, and Fahim cannot suppress his chuckle.

“Am I to take that as meaning that you found _Edwin_ intriguing?”

Henry laughs, then hunches over and groans. Alarm briefly flares in Fahim’s chest, but Henry’s voice is steady. “I’ll admit Edwin gave me something to think about, but I realised the deception soon enough. Warren, however, was a little less quick, and has told me that he did succumb to temptation. It was before we were, ah, _well-acquainted_ , but he got quite a shock. I do not believe Etta will ever let him live it down. Serves him right.” It is a lot of words at once, too many of them, and a coughing fit grips him as he cuts the last stitch. He drains the glass of whiskey when Fahim gives it to him, gestures for another, and when he has that one drained he whispers, “God bless Abraham Morris for laying in a stock of whiskey when he knew he would be away.”

“Where is he anyway?”

“Sister-in-law’s having a baby.”

They fall back into silence as Henry washes up, to keep him from coughing as opposed to any lack of words, and when Mister Adams returns with two men Fahim helps them carry the still-unconscious gambler down the street to Miss Buchanan’s small house. Fahim is all too aware of how she earned the money to afford the house, but it is not his place to criticize such things and judging by the way she flutters over the wounded man, settling him into bed and wringing her hands as Henry re-checks the dressings, she is a reformed woman. Well, that’s something new.

Henry gives her instructions, promises to check in the next day, and when they are out again in the night he sighs and huddles deeper into his heavy coat. “Fahim, I am beat. Why don’t we go up to my room and continue this conversation? I believe there is still a bottle hidden safely up there.”

It is only a short walk back to Mrs Cummings’ boarding house. Fahim steadies Henry going up the stairs, and when the bedroom door closes behind them, Henry gestures for him to sit in the chair, while he pours them each a measure of the whiskey. He hands a glass to Fahim, and sips from his own before settling on the bed

The glare that he fixes Fahim’s with could see straight through to his soul.

“Now. Perhaps you will tell me the truth of what happened out there between you and the notorious Erik.”


	4. Eights and Aces

“What makes you think something happened out there?” The question rolls off his tongue as smooth as if he has been practicing it, as if Henry has not caught him off guard and his heart is not in his throat.

Henry arches an eyebrow, his mouth a thin line, and tops up Fahim’s whiskey. “Remember Dodge? And the cattleman with the Colt .45? Who was it who pushed you out of the way when,” he swallows, voice slightly raspy, “you were distracted by the charms of La Sorelli? Moi. And who was it who pulled you out of Dong Sing’s opium den when you thought the world was upside down? Again, moi. And when they thought you were using marked cards? Who clarified the point of contention?”

“You did.”

“Exactly. We’ve been through some times together, Fahim, you and I. I’ve seen you at your lowest, and you’ve seen me, well,” his lip creases, “when I thought surviving to morning was more than I could manage. But we’re here, now. And if you expect me to believe that tinpot story about a captured man getting away from you in a thunderstorm, then you, sir, have had far more of this,” he holds up the bottle of whiskey, “than I consider healthy. Now. Tell me what happened.”

And under that steady gaze, under those eyes that he has seen so often, in softness and in kindness and in laughter, in illness, shining in pain, filled with gentleness, now looking at him as hard as flint, Fahim buckles. And maybe some of it is the whiskey, like the night when he kissed Erik, and maybe of it is just the desperate, twisting need to _talk_ about Erik, to talk about him not as a fugitive from the law, an escaped murderer, but as someone wholly more than that. As someone he has pressed himself to at night, as arms that have wrapped around him, as a hesitant smile that makes his heart skip to see. And before he can protest any further — however futile that would be, however easily Henry would see through it — the whole story comes spilling out.

How he found him in the saloon. How they shared the hidden bottle of whiskey after the rainfall. How huddling for warmth became cuddling, became kissing, became nights spent as close as they could get though Erik’s hands were still bound.

How they parted outside of town with the promise to meet. How he is planning to resign his badge and go.

The whole lot of it, every bit. And by the time he has finished, what was a full bottle is down to the last quarter, which Henry — eyes softened now, suddenly looking so terribly tired — offers him a re-fill from and he takes.

“You care for him quite a bit, don’t you?” Henry’s words are low, and Fahim has not thought of it in that way, has not thought of Erik much beyond the longing to see him again, but something in the words rings true, and though his thoughts are sluggish, spaced apart, he nods.

“Yes.”

“You are really intending to go through with this? To meet him again?”

“Yes.”

A look crosses Henry’s face, and for a moment, Fahim fears that he is going to try to talk him out of it, going to try to persuade that it is a terrible plan, that Erik was only using him (and the fear has flickered in his own heart already, that how Erik acted toward him might only be a ruse, that even now he is riding hard for Mexico, but he knows it is not like that, _he knows_ ) but instead Henry merely nods, and his lip twitches.

“Be careful, won’t you?”

“I will, of course.”

“Good. I don’t—I wouldn’t like to see anything happen to you.” His slight smile becomes a grin, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Maybe I’ll tell Warren to take the Deputy job. It might put him off moving to New Mexico.”

Fahim was taking the last sip of his whiskey when Henry said it, and he snorts, the whiskey shooting up his nose. He gags on the sudden burning pain, and Henry giggles, right fist pressed deep into his chest and then the giggle becomes full-blown laughter, and in spite of the pain in his nose, in spite of the fact he’s just spilled his heart, Fahim cannot help laughing too and soon they are both in helpless fits, tears running down their cheeks, until Henry is coughing and laughing and gasping, hunched over, arms wrapped tight around his chest, and Fahim is wiping tears from his cheeks, fumbling with the bottle to fill a glass. Henry grimaces and knocks it back, follows it with a second.

“Always forget,” he whispers. “Shouldn’t laugh. Tears the adhesions.”

He sips at a third glass, and for a long time they sit, the silence broken only by Henry’s ragged breathing. Eventually he repositions himself, his face a little less waxy than a few minutes ago, and lies back against the pile of pillows.

Fahim stands to leave, his knees weak. “Do you want me to get Warren?”

Henry sighs, and nods, his eyes already closed. “Please.” And then he swallows, one eye cracking open to regard him. “And Fahim? I won’t tell anyone.” Implicit, unsaid, are the words, _about Erik_. “I swear.”

“I know.”

* * *

 

Fahim does not have to go far to find Warren. He is just walking (though it is more accurate to say stumbling, after so much whiskey in such a short time) down the hall to his own room when he almost bumps into him. Warren steadies him, his eyes knowing.

“Henry in the room?”

Fahim nods. “He had a bad coughing fit, but it seems settled now.”

“All right.” And just when Fahim thinks he’s about to move off, he drops a hand and squeezes Fahim’s own. “I’m glad you’re back safe.” Gone is the teasing from the saloon. “He was worried about you. We both were.” With that, he slips away, and Fahim is left to stumble his way to bed, wondering, distantly, where Erik is sleeping tonight.

* * *

 

He sleeps late the next day, his dreams having been mixed up thoughts of Erik lying out under the sun, beckoning him closer, only for everything to shift and him to find himself playing poker with Warren, a cavalry officer, and a dentist from Georgia who’s feeding him cards for no discernible reason, until Warren bails out and the cavalry officer loses eight grand and his mare to the dentist. The officer is about to draw on the dentist, when a shot comes from nowhere and drops him. Fahim looks up and sees Erik, coat billowing around him like some avenging spirit, holding a smoking pistol.

He wakes with a headache pounding in the front of his skull, swears off drinking so much whiskey ever again, and does not even attempt to fathom what a dream such as that might be telling him.

Comerford has promised him the day off, after the extended time he was out of town, so he drinks half the pitcher of water that’s sitting beside the bed and makes a second attempt at sleep.

He never realized how tired he was, but when he wakes again — this time after a dreamless sleep — the day is heading on for evening, and his headache has cleared up. His stomach is demanding food, so he dresses and combs his hair and resolves to put off getting barbered for another day.

He’ll do it in the morning, after he hands in his badge, and before he rides out of town to find Erik.

As it is he still has an evening to fill, and hunger to solve.

He traipses downstairs, and finds that Mrs Cummings has the food issue taken care of. “I knew you’d be famished when you’d wake,” she says, dishing out stewed rabbit.

He eats his fill and thanks her, then settles his hat, checks his guns (better to be safe than sorry) and sets out, deciding to sit in on a poker game.

He finds one already in progress in the Arkady, both Henry and Warren playing against a gambler, a cowhand, and a shotgun rider. For some inexplicable reason, Fahim is relieved that there is not a cavalry officer nor a Georgian dentist in sight. The cowhand bails out, and Fahim takes his place, Warren dealing him in.

A body might be forgiven for thinking that Henry and Warren would go easy on each other when it comes to cards, be each inclined to let the other win. But Fahim has known them long enough that he does not suffer under such delusions. Henry treats poker with all of the sacredness of a religion, and a good deal of the passion too. And Warren is not much behind him. It is a treat to watch them play each other, the way Henry brings all of the gravity of a serious surgery, the way Warren’s lip will twitch or his eyelid flicker. Henry fleeces five hundred dollars off Warren after the rest of them fold, and then when he loses it to the gambler, Warren wins it back and then some.

What would it be like if Erik were here? Would they be trying to outdo each other? Or working in partnership to take everyone else? He doubts if Erik would let him win, doubts if he himself could let Erik win without giving it his all. But to be able to know. To be able to sit at one side of the table, and see Erik at the other, and to know that if one of them wins then they both have won, really. How would it be, to feel that flutter in his heart? It could only be wonderful.

But then again, Erik did kill three people over faro. His record at cards is not stellar by any meaning of the word. When he meets up with him again they will have to run, will have to ride hard for a border and get out of Texas, and ride further to be sure they are safe. And could he really trust Erik at cards? Trust that he will not crack, will not grow suspicious of everyone around him and start shooting?

No. However he turns it, they could never have the easy competitiveness of Henry and Warren. It would not work for them, and not really. And envy flares inside of him, hot, burning envy, to have it as easy as them, as carefree, to look at each other and know.

But they are not carefree, not really, and as soon as the envy flares it dissipates. Henry is dying. Slowly, yes, and he might have years left yet for all any of them know, if he is careful, if he is lucky. But he is dying, and there is no way around it. And someday, Henry and Warren will be just Warren.

And who could be truly carefree in the face of that?

Fahim shakes the thoughts away lest they cloud his game. He has traditionally preferred to lay small bets and bide his time when it comes to poker. He sticks to coffee tonight, leaves the whiskey drinking to the others, and is as surprised as anyone when he plays red aces and eights and wins three thousand dollars.

At least, he lets them think he’s surprised. But Warren gives him a knowing look, because Warren has seen him do this before and Henry has too, but Henry is somewhat distracted with his handkerchief.

The cough lasts long enough that Warren persuades him it’s time to go up to bed.

“You don’t want to overstrain yourself when you’re still handling all of the Doc’s work.”

Henry concedes it is a good point and acquiesces. He buys a bottle of whiskey, and squeezes Fahim’s shoulder as he leaves, so much as to say, _visit me before you ride out tomorrow._

The shotgun rider, too, cashes out, is replaced by a traveling salesman selling little silver trinkets. Not really Fahim’s sort of thing, if he is being honest, but probably something some of the whores would like. La Sorelli used to wear silver bracelets, and rings, and play them across her fingers. It was a dazzling sight.

He goes back to playing small money. It is much safer that way, especially after winning a big pot. Some of that money will help to bankroll he and Erik. It will certainly not go to loss.

He wins two small pots, loses three. The gambler concedes luck is not with him tonight, and departs. Fahim buys a bottle of whiskey, feeling brave enough to face it now, and plays on.

Seven hands later (two to the good, and he folded on three of the others), he, too decides he has had enough. He scrapes all of his winnings towards him, settles them in an inside pocket of his vest, and buys a second bottle of whiskey. He’ll give it to Henry in the morning, to make up for all that he drank last night.

The night is still young (ish). Barely past three a.m. If he retires now, he can be up at a reasonable hour. Pack what things he wants, hand in his badge, get barbered, visit Henry and put the rest of his things in his care to send on at a later stage. And be well on his way by the middle of the day. By his calculation, he should arrive at the meeting place a little before sunset if he rides hard enough, and be waiting for Erik.

Erik. Oh, but it will be lovely to see him again. It might be only a day and a half since they parted, but deep down it feels so much longer. And how he aches for his touch, to feel those fingertips on his cheek, or a hand resting hot on his thigh.

His mouth dries at the thought, and he takes a mouthful from the open bottle.

He raises the bottle to his lips, and at that moment catches a flicker of movement from the shadows. His hand falls to his hip, fingers curl around the handle of his revolver. A brief flash. Two whiskey bottles crash to the ground. _I’ll have to buy Henry another one_ , he thinks distantly, fingers oddly stiff, uncooperative as his pistol, too, falls away. The numbness washes through him. Somewhere, far away, there is shouting. _Must be a fight in a saloon._ His knees buckle, pain shooting through him but it is disconnected, is not real, not part of him. And there is one brilliant moment of piercing pain beneath his ribs that robs his breath, the stars are suddenly in front of him, not above. _Funny how the world has shifted_. Iron and salt on his tongue.

The stars twinkle. The moon shines white. _Nice and bright for Erik_. Then the stars, too, are gone. And there is darkness. And silence.


	5. O Sleep

Though he is a doctor himself, several doctors have made certain to tell him to abstain from his love life, nevermind that most of them have not the foggiest idea of the _precise_ details of said love life. And though he is permanently at war with this disease which is determined to kill him someday, never let it be said that he gave in to it.

He is twenty-eight, with all of the desires common to a man of twenty-eight even if he happens to be one who’s dying slow, and he’ll be damned if he abstains now.

He will, however, concede that perhaps he would be more _encouraged_ to partake of abstinence, if it were not for the presence of Warren in his life.

And Warren is far too good to ever consider abstaining from.

These are the thoughts going through Henry’s head as he nuzzles into Warren’s chest, presses another kiss to his skin. His muscles ache, demand rest, and he is more than willing to let them have it. He is thoroughly sated, warm and sleep-heavy, and he sighs, twining their fingers together.

“I can’t remember the last time we’ve had a night like this,” he murmurs, and Warren chuckles, fingers smoothing through his hair, careful as if even that slight action could hurt him.

“I do. It was _before_ the poker game before the Marshal went off with that posse before you insisted on joining Pete and Fahim and I to hunt down Erik.”

Henry notes, with a touch of relief, that he leaves out, _because you haven’t been well enough since._

He hates to move, hates to leave the comfortable shape he’s gotten into, half on his lover (more than two years, and still the thought of him being _his lover_ sends a little thrill through him), half off him, but his lungs will never forgive him if he stays like this and then Warren will get anxious, so it really is better to move now.

Even if he just doesn’t want to move.

He sighs and rolls over, shifts himself up higher onto his mound of pillows. Warren huffs a laugh and curls around him, pulls the blankets up to his chin, and Henry nuzzles back into his chest, sighs. “Goodnight, darling,” he murmurs, drawling a little more than usual with tiredness. _Goodnigh’ dahlin’._

Warren kisses his hair, and twists, settling deeper into the bed, never moving away. “Goodnight.”

Sleep comes easily, peaceful and dreamless, Warren’s breathing a soft soundtrack, a lullaby easing him away. And so, it is some indeterminate time later — perhaps minutes, perhaps hours — when he is abruptly jerked awake by a shot in the street.

Warren’s lips brush his forehead. “Go back to sleep.” His voice is groggy. “Probably some cowhand blowing off steam.”

Henry makes a noncommittal noise in his throat, wishes he could believe him, and cuddles a little closer.

Shouts, running footsteps. Pounding on the door.

Warren moves to get up.

Henry groans, already missing his warmth, a chill against his skin. “Tell them unless someone’s dyin’ it can wait until morning.”

Another peck to his cheek, and he doesn’t open his eyes but he can hear the rustle of Warren pulling on trousers. The knocking comes again. Warren clears his throat, and Henry hears his footsteps padding over to the door. He curls up, still trying not to hear it, trying to pretend it’s not there.

A hurried exchange, rushed voices. The door clicks closed and Henry cracks open one eye, finds Warren standing at the door, his face white, dazed, hair a tousled mess.

Fear flickers in Henry’s heart. “What is it? What’s happened?”

Warren’s eyes meet his, and then he is buckling his belt, tucking in the shirt he’s pulled on — _one of mine,_ Henry notes absently, _it fits him too snug_. “Get dressed,” he says, his voice steadier than his face would suggest. “Fahim’s been shot.”

* * *

 

Hands. He is aware of hands, fingers wrapped around his arms, fumbling at his neck. Hands pressing deep and the pain lances through him, a scream tearing itself from his throat. The hands disappear, the pain throbs, worsening and easing, tidal.

His eyes flicker open, the room a blur, bright, too bright, eyes stinging. A face swims before him, pale, faintly grey, moustache a dark slash of colour. The lips move, voice thick like soup, words lost through water. The eyes, clear blue eyes, the sky at dawn. Henry.

Henry speaks again, fingers pressing into his wrist, but he can’t understand him. It’s all garbled nonsense. Why can’t he understand him? He always used to before. Why is Henry speaking like that?

The pain spears him again, breath hitching, heart pounding. Allah, the pain. He never cared for the religion of his father, chafed at it as if it were ropes binding him, the ropes he bound Erik with, but the pain obliterates everything, obliterates Henry, the world fading dark again, the air bitter on his tongue and he gags.

One single clear voice reaches him. “Out, everybody out. I need room to work. Except you, Mister Adams. Warren, stay. I need your hands. You go, Marshal. Though would you please ask Mrs Cummings to bring up some tea? And honey? Thank you.”

Another breath of the bitter air, then silence. And darkness.

* * *

 

Heartbeat beneath his ear. _Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum._ Gentle, slow. Arms tight around his chest. Strong, warm.

Erik.

Erik, enfolding him, smelling faintly of dust, of horse, of cinnamon, oddly. Through the net of his eyelashes he sees the horses, Darius cropping the grass beside Erik’s cream mare. Such an incongruous sort of horse, such a stand-out. Audacious. He had thought Erik would be concerned about blending in, but the pale horse stands out.

_Behold the pale horse for the man who sat on him was Death…_

And then Henry’s high laugh, hysterical. He’d drunk a half-bottle of laudanum. There was bleeding deep in one of his lungs and the whiskey couldn’t touch it and he couldn’t cough, only feel as if he were drowning. So he drank the laudanum and laughed like a madman.

_Weave a circle ‘round him thrice and close your eyes with holy dread…_

Golden eyes flickering closed, a lopsided smile on twisted, long fingers twined with his. Such long fingers. They look as if they should be dancing across piano keys, not gripping the reins of a mare. The flash of them shuffling cards, nimble pulling a belt closed, stomach pulled in, a smooth undulation. Fingertips gentle against his lips, tracing the crease of his hip. So long, so long. No wonder he is quick with a gun, fingers like that.

_and for many a time_

_I have been half in love with easeful Death…_

Henry lying so still beneath the sheets. Eyes closed, lips tinged blue, parted. Each breath a faint gasp and his fingers so cold, so cold, so pale next to his own dark skin. Alcohol and laudanum poisoning, McCarthy pronounced, his face grave. _He’ll either fight it or he won’t…main thing is to keep him breathing_. Henry had stumbled into the Lady Gay, face white as a ghost, shirt half-undone, eyes dark as the night sky, not a rim of blue to be seen. _Fahim, I’ve done something awful_. A look crossed his face, hand fluttering toward his chest and then he swayed, lips an ‘oh’ and his eyes rolled as he crumpled to the floor.

_Oh bury me not on the lone prairie…_

His mother’s arms, cradling him close. “Oh my poor darling boy, you’re safe now, I promise. I promise. You’re safe, and you’re going to be well.” _But the pain, Mamma, the pain_. And as if she can hear him she holds him tighter, her lips brushing his forehead, and she hums the song she sang to him when he was very tiny, the words lost to his memory, the melody the same, bearing him away, away…

_you deserve this state,_

_Nor would I love at lower rate_

He peeps through the crack in the door. Warren, his back to him, sitting at Henry’s side, holding that limp hand to his lips. The flash of tears in Henry’s eyes, his lips twisting, and Warren bows his head. A lump catches in his throat and he turns away, away from that scene of such quiet intimacy, that tenderness. Not meant for his eyes, and that is the moment he knows.

And the hollowness that washes through him is more than he can bear.

* * *

 

The words are murmurations, soft, low, faintly muffled. “You’ve done all you can, my love. We just have to wait.” A hint of gravel in the voice. A hand wrapped loose around his, the touch cool.

A flicker of light. Henry is sitting beside him, eyes closed, leaning back against Warren. And Warren’s head is bowed, his face hidden in Henry’s hair, one of his arms half-wrapped around him, hand splayed on Henry’s chest and Henry’s fingers are half-threaded with it.

The pain stabs beneath his ribs and he hisses, the room tilting, disappearing. The hand wrapped around his own tightens its grip, and Henry’s voice is low in his ear.

“Fahim? Fahim, can you hear me?”

A moan is all he can manage, and a thumb is rubbing circles into the back of his hand. “You were shot, Fahim. But I’ve stopped the bleeding. You just need to rest, all right? Just rest.”

Something damp on his cheek, soft brush of a fingertip wiping it away, and he is adrift, and numb.

* * *

 

Henry leans against the windowsill, one arm propped over his head, hips rocked forward. It helps to open up his chest, leaning like this, makes it easier to breathe, and he tries to tell himself that smoking the cigar is not defeating the purpose, but so help him he needs something now, something to dull the aching inside. And alcohol would be a poor choice when he needs his senses sharp.

The aching is not wholly physical.

Fahim whimpers from the bed behind him, and it is a struggle not to turn and look. He has already done all he can for now, Warren is right about that, and it would not be wise to give him more laudanum, not when his pulse is already so weak. If he just doesn’t look, maybe he can pretend that Fahim is not suffering so.

All day cooped up in this room, and the window he has cracked open can only tempt in so much cool air. He is sticky down to his core, and wash his hands though he has, and changed his shirt, and changed the linens and bandages wrapping Fahim, but he can still smell the iron of blood.

He is so used to the taste of his own blood, it is stomach-churning when it is someone else’s. All the moreso that it is not a stranger’s.

God, but Fahim did not deserve this. Nobody deserves this, to take a shot like that (it buried itself in his liver — thank God it did not plough all the way through, thank God it was not a little lower, or a little more to the side, or he would have given Fahim a fatal dose of laudanum, to save him the agony of a slow death — thank God for small mercies), but Fahim least of all. What did Fahim ever do, only win big at poker?

That must be it.

That surely must be it.

It is the only reasonable thing that makes sense.

(And yet the money was not stolen. It was all safely tucked inside of his vest. Did the shooter simply have to run? Or could it mean there’s another explanation?)

His eyes flicker closed, hide the street below from view though he was not paying attention, not really. He couldn’t tell himself who was out there or what anyone was doing, never mind tell anyone else. So help him but Warren is right. He should retire to bed for a few hours, try to catch some sleep. But the very thought of it—No. If he left this room and something were to happen, if Fahim were to—

He could not live with himself.

Besides, Warren will be back soon with another shirt, and more tea. He’ll feel a little more human after that, and with the thought he stubs the cigar out in the ashtray on the windowsill.

He has never smoked so much until today. It leaves him feeling faintly sick.

When did he last eat? Sometime yesterday, but the very thought of food makes him want to heave.

The tea will do. The tea will keep him going.

He combs a hand through his hair, scrubs it down over his face and opens his eyes. His back cracks as he stretches, a slight twinge of pain. If he is unlucky the disease will eat its way into his spine, crumble the vertebrae and leave him as stiff and bent over as an old man.

(He would prefer to take a bullet first, but Warren would scold him for the thought.)

Fahim whimpers again, a faint moan that sounds almost like _Erik_.

Erik.

_Erik_.

Oh, God.

And now Henry _does_ pay attention to what is outside the window. More people than earlier. In the distance, the sun creeping back down towards the horizon. Sunset is coming.

Sunset, and Fahim was supposed to meet Erik.

Fuck.

Erik will be out there, Erik will think that Fahim isn’t coming and Erik will be right but for the wrong reason because he will not have anticipated _this_ , will not have anticipated Fahim being physically _unable_ to go because he has been shot and almost bled to death. And whatever he himself thinks of Erik (and it isn’t much) he means a lot to _Fahim_ and for that reason alone he should know what’s happened. If he hasn’t run off. If he hasn’t escaped the state by now.

But Fahim was adamant that it was nothing like that, that there were feelings there and not an elaborate ruse and for Fahim’s sake Henry will give Erik the benefit of the doubt.

But how to get a message to him?

He cannot go himself. It would be too much of a risk, to leave Fahim like this and no doctor in town. So someone else will have to go (but he promised not to tell), someone else will have to get the message to Erik (but who can he trust? It’s a delicate situation), someone else—

And the door creaks open, Warren appearing with a teapot in one hand and a clean shirt in the other and Henry thinks, this time, he might actually heave up all of the tea he’s already drunk today but it is the only way, it is all he can do, Warren is the only one he can trust and he owes it to Fahim.

( _But what if something happens to Warren? What if— no, don’t think that. Don’t consider it.)_

He swallows a breath to compose himself, but too late. Warren’s eyes have already narrowed as he shuts the door.

“What is it?” he asks, and Henry braces himself, praying his lungs don’t choose now to rebel.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

* * *

 

The words are muffled snatches. “…too late to leave now…couldn’t track…ride out at dawn…”

“…on to bed…need rest…several days in the saddle…”

“…sure?...don’t like…leaving you alone…”

“…be fine…doze in the chair…know it helps a bit…” A pause, a soft kissing noise. “…always were a fine tracker.”

“…one of…many talents…”

“…careful…won’t you?”

“…course…who else…badger you…mind yourself?”

Laughter without the heart in it, and the wave of sadness and longing that washes through him is inexplicable.


	6. From Where You Are

“I can let you examine the bullet.” The words are muffled, distant, but he would know that hard edge in Henry’s voice anywhere, when he is fighting to keep his words steady. But why is it there?  What—why is there a bullet?

Another voice, someone else but he can’t quite catch the words.

“He hasn’t been conscious enough to ask, and I would prefer if he were not disturbed. He’s in very delicate condition.”

Who’s in delicate condition? Hardly him. He’s fine. He’s just tired, that’s all. At it too hard at poker last night. Or was he? A memory flits before him, whiskey bottle and a flash of light and the moon white above him but he can’t quite grasp it. It slips between his fingers.

“…may have been Erik?”

Erik. Was he with Erik last night? Lying on the hard ground, holding him in his arms? Erik’s head nestled on his chest, arms wrapped around him. Stroking Erik’s hair, the sky above them a black tapestry of twinkling stars, world cast silver under the moon, Erik’s eyes shining through the darkness.

Erik, kissing him, lips soft and warm pressed to his forehead, his cheek. Erik’s fingers curled around his hip, face framed by the moon behind him.

Erik, Erik, everything Erik. That’s where he was last night, what he was doing. With Erik.

“Why would it? If Erik had wanted to, he could have done it when he made his escape. He had,” a wheezing cough, and breathlessly, “ample opportunity. No. Most likely it was someone from the poker game. He won big. You know that.”

“…I could be as certain as you are, Doctor.”

They’re talking about Erik? Talking about Erik having done something? But, why? Why would Erik—? If they think he’s done something they’ll go after him. They’ll catch him. They’ll shoot him if they can’t catch him and he’ll bleed to death out there alone and if they do catch him they’ll bring him in, they’ll hang him and everyone will come to see him hang and he’ll be gawked at like some spectacle and, and—

—and a whimper slips from his throat before he can stop it, pain stabbing beneath his ribs.

“Ssshhh, Fahim, you’re all right. You’ll be all right.” Soft hands touching his shoulders, fingers pressing into his throat and Henry’s voice is low, rough, then stronger when he says, “Marshal, I would prefer it if you left so I can settle my patient. We can discuss this later when he is more stable.”

A flicker of light, Henry’s face pale, a faint smile twitching at his lips. “You’ll be all right, Fahim.” A look in his eyes that he can’t quite make out, as if there is something he isn’t quite saying, something he’s leaving out. What is it? Is it about Erik? What he is not telling him? Is Erik—did something happen?

He opens his mouth to ask and another whimper slips out. A frown furrows Henry’s brow and then his face is swimming, lost, the darkness creeping back in, and all he can think is Erik. Where is Erik?

* * *

 

Erik sits tall in the saddle, exuding pride even with his bound wrists, his back straight like a cavalry man. Could he have been a cavalry man? Wearing either the blue or the grey? Likely the grey, considering his accent. And something about the notion seems to fit him; Erik in his grey uniform, back straight, head high, riding his cream mare ready for battle. The bullets would not touch him, would merely brush past him, as if he were their master parting them in the middle.

_And hell followed with him_

Shots, six shots in quick succession, bleeding together and he is running down the street, heart pounding in his ears, fingers fumbling as he pulls his pistol. Around the corner, the saloon. Which saloon? Three of them together but people are spilling out of the middle one, pale-faced. He pushes his way past, gun held high. Three bodies on the floor, Doc Morris looking at him, shaking his head. Man lying in the middle half-curled on his side moaning, fingers pressing into his stomach. A murmur from somewhere, building to a whisper, a roar. “…Erik. It was that Erik.”

_And close your eyes with holy dread_

“That is a hell of a thing for you to say to me.” And though he is nearly a head shorter than Warren, Henry still manages to look him in the eye, chin tilted defiantly, gaze like flint. “I am not nearly so sick as you like to think.” His lips press into a thin line. “And besides, you need every set of hands out there that you can get, isn’t that right, Fahim?”

“Don’t draw me into this,” the words are muttered before he can hold them back, and Warren is shooting him a pleading look. “But, Henry, it would probably be better if you stayed.” In truth he does not particularly want Henry out there, in case something happens to him. Warren is an excellent shot as it is, and Pete is not too bad himself. The three of them should be able to take in Erik without putting Henry through the strain.

Henry turns his gaze to him, eyes flashing. “Not you too, Fahim. After all we’ve been through. And you would not have me?”

It is the steadiness of that gaze that wears him down, and anyway, Henry is not coughing nearly so much as he was a few days ago.

_His flashing eyes, his floating hair_

Erik in his arms, some great sadness rolling off him as they embrace, the ground hard beneath them. And he pretends not to see the green slash in the distance, just above the horizon, the whisper of the coming dawn. But they still have this. They still have a little time.

* * *

 

The wound looks good. That much is a comfort. The wound looks good, but Fahim’s fever is up, and that is far from a comfort. Try as he may to not think about it, Henry keeps turning that fact over in his mind. There is no undue inflammation, no evident sign of infection, but Fahim’s fever is definitely up. 103, the last he checked.

Did he miss something? He wracks his brain, tries to remember the surgery. Finding the bullet. Stopping the bleeding (there was blood up to Warren’s elbows, streaks of it on his skin and a spray up his cheek, and the sight of that more than anything almost made him swoon, though he regained himself with the tea.) Fishing out several small pieces of fabric that the bullet had brought with it. Could he have missed some fabric? He’d irrigated the area with water and carbolic acid, used them to help keep his field of vision clear as he probed. He was positive that he had not mssed anything. But could he have?

If he did, he’ll have to cut again.

Fahim’s eyelids flicker, as if he hears the thought, and a moan slips from his lips, his throat working convulsively. Henry fixes the bandages, covers him again with a light blanket and takes his hand.

Another moan, and now Fahim’s lips twist, his fingers flexing in Henry’s hand.

Henry bows his head, so that his lips are close to Fahim’s ear, and whispers, softly, “are you in pain?”

The nod that comes is very slight, tiny droplets of tears glistening caught in Fahim’s lashes, and Henry does the calculations, consults his watch. A little past noon (is it only that? It feels like days have already passed without Warren, and not merely six hours). It is not so very long since he last had a dose of laudanum, but a small dose should be no harm now. And if it brings him some relief…

He is reaching for the bottle before he has finished the thought. It is uncorked in a moment, and then he is slipping his arm under Fahim’s neck, raising his head ever so slightly, enough that he can trickle some of the laudanum into his mouth without choking him. Fahim gags as he swallows, grimacing, and Henry sighs.

“I know it tastes awful.” _I know all too well_. “But it will help, I promise.” _That much I can say for it._

He sets the bottle back on the bedside locker, and eases Fahim down, reflexively smoothing his fingers through his hair. A flash of memory: him, at his worst, in bed, razorblades slicing his chest from the inside with each breath, and Warren, leaning in, carding his fingers through his hair, lips light on his forehead, cheek brushing his, hand splayed over his heart. Each as close as they could get.

He cannot fight the sudden tears, a wave of longing crashing into him. Warren. Warren has already been gone for hours. How much longer will it take? The rest of today? All of tomorrow? Fahim told him (is it only two nights ago?) that Erik would be waiting half a day’s ride away and it has already been half a day. Does that mean Warren will be back tonight?

He hopes so. Oh, God, he hopes so. Let him come back and let him be safe. Please, God, let him be safe.

Fahim’s fingers twitch against his own, draw his attention back to the present, back to this room and his dear friend wounded and ill, and he looks down, sees a rim of dark green iris regarding him from beneath heavy lids.

The voice is faint, hoarse, but the words are unmistakeable. “H—how you…Warren first re—re—?”

“How we got together?”

A slight nod, and a swallow. The tears blur Henry’s vision again, blur Fahim, but he does not wipe them away, only squeezes his fingers harder.

His voice is hoarse when he gathers the strength to speak, and Fahim’s eyes have slipped closed.

“It was in Dodge, after I had that haemorrhage…”

And all at once, the two-year-old memories swirl in. The pain in his chest a sharp point of pressure deep in his left lung. The whiskey couldn’t touch it, and every moment felt as if he was being stabbed. It was all he could do just to breathe. Even sleep was beyond him, so he took the laudanum even though he has always hated it, hated the bitterness of it, hated the way it slows his mind and leaves his thoughts like soup. But he took too much of it, and too much whiskey too, and when he went to find Fahim for to tell him what he had done he collapsed in the saloon. It was Fahim and Warren who carried him back to his room, and every hour was incomprehensible, the world full of strangers traipsing in and out, time not even a concept, every face familiar and unknown.

Except Warren. He always knew Warren, had been keenly aware of him ever since he first took the stagecoach for Dodge and saw him riding shotgun. And the way his heart stuttered that first day it was as if he had laid eyes on an Adonis, sitting up beside the driver, covered in dust, shotgun over his knees and his sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Like some sort of demigod forced to live amongst men.

Henry felt himself fall ten times on that journey, though he never left his seat. And ever after he made it his mission to befriend the shotgun rider, and they shared whiskey and poker games and stories, all the time the longing thrumming beneath his skin to lean over, across the table, and kiss him. Weeks of longing, months of it.

When he came back to his senses after the haemorrhage, when the whiskey and laudanum had cleared from his mind though the pain in his chest remained, he felt himself fall all over again at the sight of Warren slumped in the chair by his bedside, head sharing the pillow with his, hand lying beside his on the sheets.

“…and I took a chance, and asked if he would kiss me. And I was weak as a whipped kitten and decided if he didn’t then I could always blame the impulse on my illness, claim that I had not been thinking clearly when I asked. But he kissed me, Fahim, he did. And it was the first time the world felt right.”

His voice catches, and a faint smile tugs at Fahim’s lips, but Henry is too caught in the memory to truly notice, can still feel Warren’s kiss pressed to his forehead, to his cheeks over the tracks of his tears, to the back of his hand, and then, finally, to his lips.

_I wondered if you would ever ask,_ Warren had murmured, kissing him again on the corner of his mouth, and it was all he could do to stifle a sob.

The memories fill him, his heart full and aching, longing for Warren to take him in his arms again, to kiss him like that, with all of that gentleness, all of that tenderness, his fingertips light ghosting over his cheekbones. And fresh tears trickle from his eyes as he bows his head, but his heart is too full to wipe them away.

* * *

 

Erik, Erik where is he? He’s supposed to be here, supposed to be with him. Or was he supposed to go to Erik? Supposed to meet him at sunset and hold him and kiss him? Or is that too romantic? Too flamboyant, too _Henry_ of a thing to do? Erik was supposed to come here, wasn’t he? Supposed to meet him and they would drink and play cards and pretend for all the world as if nothing could tough them and then they would leave town, just slip away in the night and find their own adventure.

Which way was it supposed to be? He can’t think, it all seems too mixed up and the key thing is that Erik is not with him and he is not with Erik and they are separated and alone. Apart from each other when what they crave is to be together? Goddammit where’s Erik?

Something damp on his cheeks, the air cold. Cool fingertips wiping them away and a harsh cough, hoarse voice.

“He’ll be here soon, Fahim, I promise. Warren is gone to find him. He’ll be here, he’s coming.”

But there’s something—something about danger, that’s not quite right. Something about a judge and a gallows and a length of rope and a trapdoor. What is it? He feels it, just of his reach, the answer to the question, but he can’t—can’t quite—

Fingers grasping his, stilling them. Were they moving? Must have been, but—

“He’ll make certain he’s safe for you, all right? He’ll tell him what happened, so he doesn’t—doesn’t wonder. You don’t have anything to worry about, all right, Fahim? All right?”

The words make no sense. Why would he be worried? Erik is coming, and that’s all that matters. Erik. Those golden eyes, coming through the darkness, more beautiful than any painting. Coming to him. Erik.

* * *

 

Jumbled words, pain throbbing beneath his ribs. Warm, too warm, but cold too and he shivers, the pain sharpening, air cold sucked through teeth.

“…is he?”

“Fever’s higher than I’d like…hope I don’t…open him up again…”

Cough, harsh, rattling. A groan, mutter of, “not now, not now.” Slosh of whiskey in a glass and a gasp.

Another voice, gentle, a woman. “You need rest, Doctor. I’ll take over and you get some sleep.”

“No—no thanks. I’ll be all right…in a minute, just—just pushing a little too hard. Need to be here in case he—case he wakes.” A flash of light. Henry, face grey, hand pressed to his chest and a faint smile on his lips. Light hand on his forehead, moves, vanishes, re-appears again, fingers pressing into the side of his throat, his wrist. “Just go back to sleep, Fahim. Rest. You’re going to be all right.” Henry blurs, swirls. A glass pressed to his lips. Bitter taste that makes him gag. A sharp bolt of pain, and silence.

* * *

 

The night air is cool on his face and he sighs, leans his head against the window frame. Behind him, Fahim is more peaceful than he has been all day, having exhausted himself with his whimpers and murmurings, and sleep pulls heavy at Henry’s own eyelids, but he rubs them to try and massage it away. There’ll be time enough for sleeping when Fahim is out of danger, when he’s well again.

(When Warren is back. When he can touch him, hold him, can know he is safe.)

If Fahim’s fever were to spike during the night, it would not do if he were asleep. No, he needs to stay awake. He must stay awake.

Or if Fahim were to wake, and ask for Erik. He always asks for Erik, now. He never used to before. Any time he was ill before he tended to stay quiet, or laugh at nonsensical things, or fall off into ramblings about the past. But now, this time. Every word of his is for Erik.

And Henry knows, oh how he _knows_ , that it is not his place to talk about such things, everything considered, but he cannot help feeling troubled about it. Fahim has often expressed passing interest in different women — the lovely Sorelli being only one — and though he has never expressed such interest before in a _man_ (not out loud, and certainly not sober and that one night when they’d both tied one on too tight most certainly does not count, and frankly he’s not certain Fahim remembers it anyway, so he has never mentioned) it has been clear to see in his face, to a man knowledgeable about such things.

But he has never asked for someone when he’s been ill before, never mind asked for someone repeatedly, and become upset that he is not here.

It is not his place to judge, but it is definitely troubled.

Christ, but he hopes he was not lying when he told Fahim that Erik would come. What could he possibly say if Warren comes back without him?

(If Warren comes home safe. Please, God, let Warren come home safe.)

Pray that Fahim does not remember any of his promises, he supposes. It sounds like the most logical solution.

He could always lie and say that Warren could not find him. He has always had an excellent poker face, all grave and serious and sober-suited, as if he is delivering news of a death. Works a treat.

But if he had his poker face on, then Fahim might think that something happened to Erik. And that might upset him ten thousand times worse.

Damn but it is an awful situation.

Erik better well come.

He draws his coat tighter around himself, and draws his pack of cards from the inside pocket, sets them on the windowsill. He has his cards, and he has his whiskey and his cigars. If needs be, he’ll practice his sleight of hand all night to keep himself awake.

Shuffle, riffle, cut. Eight of spades. Split, square, pivot, cut. Ace of hearts. Snap, riffle, arch, release, cut. Eight of spades. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle…

And behind him, Fahim’s soft breathing is enough to keep him going.


	7. Whispers in the Dark

It was barely past dawn when Henry was called away. Knife fight, plenty of lacerations. His knees ached at having to get up and deal with it, and anxiety twisted in his heart at having to leave Fahim. Never mind that he had given him a fresh dose of laudanum and so Fahim should sleep peacefully for a few hours, even with his forehead burning up.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Mrs Cummings promised as he left, but it wasn’t much comfort. Having to leave at all was enough to make him feel ill, no matter who was left looking after Fahim.

He could not care less about the cause of the fight, or who attacked who. Once he has the two men stitched up (three arm slashes, a deep gash in the left leg, and some small nicks that really amounted to very little of anything), he washes off and decides to check in on the gambler he had to stitch up the other evening, when Fahim arrived back in town.

Just a quick visit. While he’s out of the boarding house anyway.

The gambler is sitting up in bed, colour in his cheeks, the picture of recovering health. Henry checks the dressings and passes him as making excellent gains, and then — all necessary duties attended to — retires back to the boarding house. The sun is high, the temperature steadily creeping up, and it is a relief to be back inside before the day may truly be said to be hot.

Where must Warren be out there? Somewhere close to Erik, he hopes. Somewhere on the way back to town, he prays. His horse, good old Deputy, could carry him forever without wearing down, but it is not old Deputy that is at the forefront of Henry’s mind.

So help him, but if Warren gets hurt—

Mrs Cummings waylays him before he can climb the stairs, and pulls him from his thoughts.

“He’s resting,” she says, eyes narrowed, hands on her hips. “And I am _not_ letting you back up there, Doctor, until you stop and sit for a few minutes and eat something. I swear you’ve lost weight just in the last two days. And you should shave. It’ll make you feel like a new man.”

He barely has time to think, _Warren must have put her up to this_ , before she is taking him by the arm and steering him back to the kitchen, still muttering that he’s “…no good to anyone if you neglect yourself, Doctor, you should know that…”

And so it is knowing that protest is futile in the face of his concerned landlady, that Henry acquiesces to being mothered.

If he did not know any better, he might almost think that she had instigated the knife fight to get him out of the room for a little while.

* * *

 

He could lie here forever like this, encased by these arms. The soft murmur of a heartbeat beneath his ear. As soothing as any lullaby. One hand splays over his own heart, light and soft, measuring the rhythm of his being. And the lips that brush just over his ear are a butterfly touch. To lie here like this, wrapped in each other, until the world stops turning, until the sea covers the land and they sink, sink down through the waves, hidden from the eyes of everyone, a secret known only to each other, and the water keeping them endlessly safe.

What more could they ever need?

* * *

 

After his period of forced acceptance of coddling, Henry can only be grateful that Mrs Cummings allows his bath to be a quick one. She had arranged — without telling him, of course — for Ah-Sing to bring over several buckets of hot water and dump them in the old metal bathtub. There was no use in arguing with her, so he took a quick dip, and washed his hair, his heart pounding hard for to be back with Fahim and though she was right that he does feel like a new man, he is loath to admit that even to himself. It is all such a tremendous _waste of time_ , when he needs to be checking on Fahim, ensuring that his fever has not risen, ensuring that his wound is still healing as it should, ensuring that he is not in any pain. So many things he needs to ensure, and the woman has forced him to take a _bath_ in the middle of it.

He dresses in fresh clothes, the waistcoat a champagne one that he knows Warren likes (and tries not to tell himself that he is doing it in the hope it will draw Warren back like a moth to a flame), and shaves. Though the day is warm, he is almost cold in his cleanliness, and he rubs away the pain in his chest with one hand as he smooths his hair with the other. Damned chest pain. Always creeping in to interfere when he least needs it to.

He takes a shot of whiskey from the bottle under the bed to deaden it (as opposed to the bottle stashed in a draw under his shirts), and shakes away the shudder that comes from drinking it too fast. And then, at last, he goes to Fahim.

And finds him more peaceful than he expected. Gone is the rambling, the asking for Erik, and he only whimpers slightly at the changing of his dressings. Henry notes, too, that the wound still looks good, and though Fahim’s temperature is still a little higher than he’d like (102, now) even that is down on what it was.

He is not a superstitious man, but he forbids himself from considering all of these to be good signs. He has seen enough to know that improvements can be only temporary (his own… _malady_ is evidence enough of that). But still. The signs are definitely hopeful.

And it is as if all of the anxiety of earlier, the unsettled fear when he was torn away, the mild panic at each new delay that Mrs Cummings presented, were the only things carrying him on. He is suddenly, crushingly tired, and he scrubs a hand over his face, massages his aching eyes.

Just because Fahim is doing well — for now — it does not mean he can let his guard down, can sleep. He may have missed something. All of this could change and he _would_ miss something.

And there is still Warren.

Still Warren, out there somewhere. And the very memory of him is a bolt through Henry, shaking the tiredness off, forcing him to sit up. Still Warren, and he could have failed to find Erik, could be lost or wounded or—or—

No. He clamps down on the thoughts before they can even present him with the word, but the image comes anyway. Warren, sprawled on the ground, face tilted up the sky, bleached pale, eyes hollow and blank, a dried crust of blood trickled from his mouth and a sticky pool of it seeping from beneath, mingled with the sand, chest torn open in a single blast of buckshot, fingers bloodstained and limp in the dirt.

He can hear the echo of the shot over the land, the screeching of the vultures, and bile rises hot in his throat, choking him, but he swallows it down, the taste acrid and bitter in his mouth. He fumbles for the bottle of whiskey, tries to shake the horrible, nightmare image away, washes the taste of it from his mouth.

That is why he can’t sleep. Those images will follow him, will haunt him, will curse Warren and prove true if he lets them get hold of him and he pulls his cards from his pocket, shuffles them, riffles them, tries to follow the movement of them in his hands as if they will drive the dreams away, as if they will keep him.

The cards are all that matters, the cards and Fahim, and none of the rest of it is real, only what’s in this room. None of the rest of it, only him, and Fahim, and the single solitary fact that Warren is coming to him, and is bringing Erik, and they are safe, and whole.

They must be.

They must.

The image of them, riding side by side, is a beacon through the darkness pulling him back to himself, and at last he takes a breath, as deep as he dares and chokes down the urge to cough, and clings to them, to that image. The one thing that can save them now.

* * *

 

Snatches, flickering before him. Moments half intangible, slipping between his fingers. As fleeting as breath-mist on a cold night, and if he could grasp them, could hold them, just for a moment— But they all fly away from him, as if he is frozen and they are so many pellets fired from the muzzle of a shotgun.

Stage bouncing beneath him, badly-sprung, hips aching, ribs jarred half-loose as if one wind will send him shattering, shattering, cast to the four corners of the world. The dust out the tiny window swirls, blooms out and hides the rider loping alongside, the glint of his badge all that remains.

Half-dozing when the rolling thunder pulls him to wakefulness but it is not above him, is rumbling in the ground, trembling through him and as he jumps to his feet the nightherd cries “STAMPEDE” and he is running, running, scrambling onto the first horse he can find, racing to the head of the herd firing, firing to turn them, to mill down, rattle of horn against horn, blue sparks jumping from one to the other, the cattle demons sent forth from hell’s gate, like something an opium-addled miner mutters about with wild eyes, fumbling hands and a crack shatters the thunder, the leading steer drops, and the cattle turn in on each other, panting and snorting, sweat-mist rolling off them in the darkness.

Fumbling hands, hot lips, scratch of stubble on his cheek. Fingers dipping beneath a waistband, brushing hot flesh, and a moan into his mouth, fists his shirt and they are falling, falling and rolling, at once on top and beneath and the silence of the night is silk upon their skin, mingled blood and whiskey all he can taste, the voice murmuring poetry in his skin cough-roughened.

Dark silhouette imprinted on the blue sky, so light it’s almost white. Horse bucking, jolting, and for one moment he’s certain Warren has been thrown, but he holds on even as the horse bucks along at the edge of the railing, rears high, his face twisted in a grimace. He looks to Henry as the horse goes back to bucking, but Henry’s eyes are riveted on Warren, his lips thin, jaw set.

The music, hazy as the smoke, opium-dulled and soft. It has never struck him before that Henry never coughs when he plays, but he has been playing for so long now, half the night, and has not reached for his whiskey once, brow furrowed in concentration, eyes only for the keys. He sways, leans forward with the music, wearing that burgundy waistcoat that sets off the red tinge in his hair. And it is as if the music is something sacred, some blessing, that wipes his illness away, transforms him into a man like any other. The tears blur his vision, blur Henry, and he looks down, back to his cards. Black aces, red eights, and a chill runs down his spine.

His eyes flicker open, the room bright, white. His breath stutters, heart racing, pain throbbing beneath his ribs and he swallows down a whimper. (Lying down. Why is he lying down?) Slowly the room clears, sharpens. Henry, lying back in a chair, head bowed, eyes closed, face bone pale. For a moment, as the light brushes him, it is as if he has died. Then his fingers shuffle the cards he is holding, pull five free, and his eyes open, look down at them. A snort as he shuffles the cards back into the deck, and Fahim’s eyes slip closed again, Henry an imprint that follows him into his dreams.

* * *

 

It is getting on for sunset, again, when the door creaks open, and Henry looks up from his cards, half-expecting to see either Mrs Cummings or Marshal Comerford framed in the doorway, already musing over what excuse he’ll give to send them on their way.

His breath catches when his eyes fall on Warren, and he inhales deeply, the urge to cough prickling in his throat.

Warren. Warren, standing there, coat over his clothes, brown with trail dust, (why is he wearing his coat? It is far too warm), a smudge on his stubbled chin, faint smile creasing his lips, hat in his hands. He has never looked so handsome as in this moment, and Henry is not aware of the door creaking closed, of setting down his cards, of rising from his chair, of crossing the room. But Warren’s arms open for him, his hat fluttering to the floor, and he is aware of them closing around him, aware of his own arms pulling Warren to him, aware of Warren’s sharp inhale.

Warren, here. Warren, _safe._

Tears prickle his eyes and he fights them back because he will be damned if he cries now when Warren has returned whole and well.

Their lips brush and he tastes dry dust. Dust has never been more welcome.

“Ah-Sing is bringing over hot water for a bath,” Warren murmurs into his mouth, and the words are a thousand times away from romantic but Henry cannot suppress a smile, thinking of the rounds Ah-Sing has been put to today, “but Mrs Cummings agreed I could come up to check on Fahim.”

“She always did dote on you.” It is the baldest possible truth. Henry has always suspected that the widow woman would have her eye on Warren if he were not so clearly uninterested. And Henry will grant that he is biased in the matter, but who could blame her, really?

A chuckle, deep in Warren’s throat. “Not as much as on you.” And in his finest imitation of a woman’s voice he says, “oh, that _nice_ Doctor Russell. So polite, so tidy, never eats much, always on time with the rent. I do hope his lungs are not troubling him too much this weather, Mister Stapp.”

“Shut up.” But he smiles as he says it, and Warren grins back, and the kisses that they share are soft.

“How has Fahim been?” Warren asks, leaning back a little bit when the soft kisses threaten to become more passionate.

“Better now than he was.” Henry clears his throat, willing away the pain that stabs again deep in his chest. ( _Not now for Christ’s sake_.) “Did you find Erik?” _Please say you found Erik. Don’t make all of the promises I’ve made into lies._

Warren nods, and his jaw tightens. “Took a lot of tracking, but I got him.” And his voice is steady, but when Henry’s arms tighten around him he hisses with pain and draws back. The world tilts, and again Henry is seeing that horror image of Warren sprawled on the ground, chest torn open with buckshot.

And all he can think is, _that explains why he’s wearing his coat_ , before he’s pulling off said coat, discovering blood staining the side of his shirt. He does not have time to register that the blood is dry before he’s fighting a fresh wave of nausea, and Warren is muttering, “not as bad as it looks.”

In a moment, the doctor part of Henry has gained the upperhand, has pushed away the lover. No place for him here, and his voice is steady (though his legs are weak) when he says, “Let me look at it. What happened?” and pushes Warren across the room, into the chair by Fahim’s bed. Before Warren can answer he is pulling open the shirt, and the pounding of his heart steadies a little when he sees that it’s only a graze along the ribs. Not deep, not even serious, the sort of wound that bleeds far more than it should, as if it has the authority to terrify people.

The laugh that bursts from his lips is vaguely hysterical, relief by-passing both the doctor and the lover before he gains control of himself again, tries not to think, _I could have lost you._

The smile gracing Warren’s lips is soft. “I told you it looks worse than it is.” And he stretches out a hand, takes Henry’s and squeezes it, an affirmation of, _see? I’m here, I’m well, you have nothing to worry about._ “I caught him a little by surprise, is all. It took him a minute to realise I wasn’t hunting him, and once I shouted it was about Fahim he calmed down. It’s just, before that—” and his smile turns rueful, “well, he’s a faster draw than I gave him credit for.”

And Henry smiles back, even as he thinks, _Trust Fahim to pick a good shot_ , and he reaches for the carbolic acid, grateful that he still has it in this room for when he’s changing Fahim’s dressings.

“And what did Erik say when you told him?”

Warren’s smile slips away, and at once his face turns troubled. “He was not at all happy. I had to persuade him away from committing murder, especially since we don’t know who actually did it. But he’s going to slip into town when dark comes. Just to see him for himself.”

And Henry thinks of Fahim, thinks of the way he has asked for Erik. “That should comfort Fahim.” He presses a cloth to the top of the bottle, upends it quick then rights it. “Now don’t wince.”

_And if you do wince,_ he thinks but does not say, _it serves you right for worrying me._


	8. After the Storm

It is some time around one a.m., and most residents of the boarding house are still sequestered away in the saloons (Henry knows this because Warren once did a thorough audit of the habits of the other residents, so as to gauge the best time to engage in their own, ah, _pursuits_.) Mrs Cummings herself retires religiously at half ten each night (the only religious thing about that woman.) All in all, it means this is the perfect time of night for Warren to help Erik in through the window of their own room, with the aid of his rawhide riata, legacy of his old cowhand days.

It would have been preferable if Erik could have come through Fahim’s window, but with the window facing the street it was deemed too much of a risk. So their window, looking out on the vacant lot, was much more appropriate. Even if it does increase the risk of their getting caught in the short trip down the hall.

But odds are that won’t happen, and Henry tries not to think about it. If it does happen, it means a hanging for Erik and altogether too many difficult questions and too much trouble for he and Warren. The only way to qualify it, to explain it, would be to admit to what happened between Fahim and Erik out there, and that is so many thousands of degrees away from _acceptable_ —

No. He will simply not think about it. The whole thing does not bear thinking about, so he instead tells himself how happy it will make Fahim to see Erik.

Fahim, who is still wearing that beard he came back with.

Damn, he should have shaved him.

Too late now.

Henry swallows, and smooths his fingers over his handkerchief. He’s twisted it too hard waiting for Warren and Erik to appear, left creases all through the fabric. So many creases that smoothing it is futile, and he stuffs it back into his pocket, flicks open his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes and looks at the face without seeing the time. What’s taking them so long?

A low moan slips from Fahim, and he grimaces as if he senses Henry’s thoughts. A fanciful notion. More likely the pain is starting to hit him. He’s missed a laudanum dose, but it’s the only way to have him even semi-lucid to see Erik. And when Erik can only make this one visit, it’s better that Fahim be at least partly awake for it.

When Erik’s gone he’ll get a fresh dose. Dull any lingering pain.

The door creaks and Henry jumps, turns around and pockets his watch. A tall man is pushed through, covered in dust, half his face distorted and his lip twisted, and it takes Henry a moment to realize that this is Erik. Behind him in a heartbeat is Warren, and the door is closed again.

Erik reaches up, his fingers long and white, and sweeps off his hat, tosses it aside. He crosses the room to Fahim’s bedside without a word, and stands there for stretching breaths that feel like hours, before turning back to Henry. And Henry’s heart stutters when he sees those golden eyes.

Golden eyes. He’s seen them— Where?

It rushes back to him in an instant. A sweaty town in Lousiana. A tall man with a black mask, golden eyes peering out from behind it, the eyes all he could see, the whole encounter conducted by fumbling feel. He had not long left Virginia, was still learning the bounds of his illness, the diagnosis new and he felt as if everyone could see it so he tried to wash it away in whiskey and those early months, long before he met Warren, are a blur of cards and half-formed men without faces. But the mask was soft beneath his fingers, and the man was a hophead half-rambling but Henry himself was in no better condition and the golden eyes had speared him.

The memory is suddenly sharp, suddenly too much, and pain throbs behind his eyes. He reaches up, massages his temples, feels Warren’s fingers light on his arm. It’s too much of a coincidence for two men to have the same disconcerting eyes, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

“Any idea who did it?” Erik’s voice is low, an edge to it that makes Henry shudder, draws him back to the present.

Before he can frame an answer, Warren cuts in. “None. But we’ll find out.” Fresh worry flares in Henry’s heart, and he has no doubt that Warren will find out but so _help_ him if something happens—if he gets hurt—

Henry swallows down the worry, keeps his face impassive, and Warren nods back towards Fahim, still resolutely looking at Erik. “Best that you not stay too long.”

* * *

 

It comes to him in tiny pieces, fragments floating through the darkness. Fingers lightly tracing his cheek, an impression that lingers in his skin. A hand squeezing his, long fingers wrapped around. “Fahim.” His name, soft, hoarse, faintly musical. Not Henry’s voice. Someone else, someone— a flash, a flicker of shining eyes and his heart catches, a whimper slipping from his lips when for a moment the pain beneath his ribs flares sharp, then dulls. “Oh, Fahim.”

Lips brush the back of his hand, barely-there, and Erik’s voice is firmer, farther away, when he asks, “How has he been?”

“The bullet was lodged in his liver. He lost quite a lot of blood, and I’ve been giving him laudanum for the pain. He’s been easier the last few hours.” Henry, hoarse, voice brittle as if he is fighting to maintain himself.

And Erik’s words are low when he asks, “Do you think he’ll—”

“I can’t promise anything, but if an infection sets in then there’s not very much I can—” and the brittleness in Henry’s voice cracks. A soft shushing, and any words are lost in the distraction of a thumb rubbing smooth circles into the back of his hand.

Erik. Erik is here. And that single fact is the most important thing in the world.

To hell with the tiredness weighing down his every limb! To hell with the pain throbbing beneath his ribs! To hell with it all! Erik is here and he needs to see him. He _must_ see him.

Erik. The very name is luring him on, as if it is some sort of a spell, a charm created solely for him, a blessing to keep him safe. And if he manages to open his eyes, and see him, then everything will be perfect, and nothing will be wrong.

If he just opens his eyes—

He catches a flash of light that stings, makes his eyes water, and he groans, closes them again.

“Take it easy, Fahim, easy.” Henry is back in control again, murmuring in his ear, fingers probing at his wrist.

But he can’t take it easy, can he? He needs to see Erik or he’ll die. The longing of it will kill him. He can feel it, he knows it. It is the single indisputable fact, if he does not see Erik his heart will burst and Henry might be a good doctor but even Henry could not save him from bleeding to death inside if he does not see Erik.

He tries again, gritting his teeth and squeezing the hand that’s holding his. Just a crack, even a crack would be enough, a crack—

Erik swims before him, brown with dust, streaked on his cheeks, his hat missing, golden eyes rimmed with red. And tears water in Fahim’s eyes, tears of pain, desperation, relief, and they roll down the side of his face, but Erik smiles at him weakly, wipes them away, his fingertips gentle.

Distantly there comes, “we’ll just give you two a minute.” The door creaks, snicks shut, but Fahim cannot draw his eyes away from Erik. To think, Erik is here! It is like some sort of a dream, and for a moment the world floats away, but then Erik is back, and his soft smile is tempered by something impossible to read.

“How do you feel?” And Erik’s voice is soft, so soft but oh so welcome, a balm to the pain throbbing inside of him. He would answer, but his throat is dry, and even swallowing scratches it. His whole body is heavy, leaden, and his thoughts are thick as soup. All he can muster is a groan, and he would move closer to Erik, but he aches too much even for that.

Erik swallows, worries his upper lip. Does it not hurt him, that lip? Its scar twisting upwards? Or is it so old now he has ceased to feel it? Could he even feel it as they kissed? The impression of it tingles still on Fahim’s own lips, but in a heartbeat is lost again when fingers twine with his own. Erik’s long fingers. Those fingers, tracing over his skin, curling around his wrist, and he whimpers, not in pain.

“Your friends care for you very much.” What may be a slight smile twitches at Erik’s lip, and in spite of the aching, in spite of the heaviness and the tiredness, Fahim manages a weak smile for him. It is not news to him that his friends care for him. He cares for them too, deeply, and dimly he remembers Henry, murmuring softly to him through the darkness, Henry sitting beside him, playing with cards. But to hear someone else say it swells his heart. His dear, sweet friends. But Erik is worrying his lip again, and there is a touch of hesitancy in his voice. “I may have shot at Warren. A misunderstanding, I assure you! But he is well, and it was he who told me about—” A vague hand gesture, as much as to say, _all of this_. “I’m not used to—I’m so _sorry_ , Fahim. We should have—I never should have suggested that you stay in town. This wouldn’t have happened and now—” Tears glisten in his eyes, and it is so wrong, so terribly, awfully wrong, for Erik to know tears, that fresh ones spring to Fahim’s eyes. Why should Erik cry? Erik has nothing to cry over. He has done nothing that would warrant tears, but they are slipping down, down over the rims of his eyes, cutting a fresh path through the dust on his cheeks, and Fahim’s heart twists. He does not have the strength to raise his hand, to wipe them away, but they just—they’re so awful to see, and he’s so tired, he can’t keep his eyes open, feels them flickering shut in spite of his best efforts, but he needs to stay awake, needs to see Erik, needs to drink in every moment that he’s here, with those eyes and those hands and that voice, beside him, but he’s so tired, so tired, and the darkness threatens, fingers stroking his hair, the darkness washing Erik away.

“Kiss me.” His lips are stiff as he whispers, voice gravelly, but he needs Erik to kiss him, needs to feel him real, oh sweet heavens he needs him.

A soft brush on his hand, on his forehead, on his cheek. A splash of a droplet on his face. And he’s slipping, slipping, can feel himself falling, when there comes a very slight, very soft, press of lips upon his. 

The imprint of it lingers long after he has slipped away.

* * *

 

Erik cares for Fahim, seems to care for him quite deeply. And whether Henry considers that a good or a bad thing (and his feelings are, for the most part, mixed) it is something he cannot deny. It is evident in every inch of him, sitting in the chair by the bed, in the softness of his voice, in the way he brushes Fahim’s cheek with his fingertips and cradles his hand. In the way he stoops before he gathers himself, just to press his lips to Fahim’s forehead once more. And Henry is crushingly reminded of his own illness, of Warren’s infinite gentleness with him when they were first together and he was recovering from his laudanum overdose.

_I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him_ , Warren whispered when they were out of earshot, the words drifting back now. _But if he makes Fahim happy I’m willing to give him a chance._

And on that point they are agreed.

In one fluid movement Erik picks his hat up, smooths back his hair, and puts it on as he turns to them, all softness dropped in an instant, pearl-handled revolvers glinting at his hips.

Henry is keenly aware of the knife in his boot, and the derringer tucked into his waistcoat.

But Warren, as ever, remains level, and disentangles his hand from Henry’s, drawing himself up to his full height, almost eye to eye with Erik.

“I think it best that you don’t linger in town.”

And Erik nods, but his fingers tap his left revolver. “I would like to find who did this to him.”

“As would I, but as I said, we’ll take care of it.”

Henry has the distinct feeling that there is more being said than mere words. They camped together last night. Warren has told him as much. Who knows what they might have planned?

For all he knows, Warren has made a deal with the Devil.

Erik tilts his head back towards Fahim, lips taut. “You’ll take good care of him. Won’t let him come to any more harm.” And both statements are emphatically not questions.

“Of course. And when he’s well enough we’ll get him to you. But you need to get out of Texas.”

Silence reigns, and Erik’s eyes flicker to him a moment before returning to Warren, as if he is sizing something up. Then he lets his coat fall over his revolvers and slips his hands into his pockets and nods. “I’ll ride for Mexico. I am running short on provisions, but in acquiescence to your wishes I will leave town and find them elsewhere.”

The room itself seems to sigh, but Warren nods, and without so much as offering to shake their hands Erik walks to the door.

“I’ll help you back out the window,” Warren offers, and without another word both of them are gone and Henry is left alone with Fahim again.

His knees are suddenly weak, tension bleeding from him all at once, and he sinks into the chair, drawing a cigar from his pocket with fumbling hands and searching for a match. He gets it lit, and coughs on the first smoke, but then it soothes through him and he sighs, closes his eyes, but the anxiety coiled deep in his stomach twists, refuses to dissipate. He will not breathe freely until Warren is back here, and Erik is out of the building, out of town.

He can understand their desire to find the man who shot Fahim. Heaven knows he shares it, and if he knew who it was, he’d like to think he’d able to handle it civilly. There’s every chance the shooter has a straighter shot than he does anyway. Anything outside of six feet is a thousand times more than he can manage with assured accuracy. But if he were a better shot, if it were — Heaven forbid it, and forgive him for entertaining the notion even the barest moment — _Warren_ lying here in this bed—

Ah. There. A burning to take the culprit in his own hands, though he could not whip a dog without his cough getting the better of him. Perhaps then he would be inclined to draw first and ask questions later.

Erik probably could whip a dog. Probably could whip a lot of things. He is lean, true, but there is a leashed power about him, and if he _is_ the same golden-eyed man he remembers from Louisiana (and odds are he is, Henry knows enough to recognize a fellow Southerner, albeit a deeper one), then he has exceptional skills with a rope and a knife.

He is far from a squeamish man. If he were he could hardly be a doctor, but the day after his night of intimacy with the masked hophead, the hophead had roped and laid open a man for making a grab for his mask, and Henry shivers now at the memory.

A moan from the bed draws him back and he opens his eyes. Fahim, brow furrowed, lips tight, sweat beading on his forehead. Of course, the laudanum. In another day or two he will start weaning him off the heaviest of the dose, but for now he uncorks the bottle and pours a measure into a glass. He stubs out the cigar — it was getting to be hateful anyway — and slips his arm under Fahim’s head, raises it, presses the glass to his lips, watches as he swallows, then settles him back down, dabs the sweat from his forehead.

Already Fahim seems easier, and he squeezes his hand as he sits back, the limp fingers trembling in his grip for a moment. Hopefully it will have done him the world of good to see Erik.

When he’s been at his worst, it’s always made everything a little more bearable to see Warren.

And it is as if on cue that he hears the door creak behind him, and Warren’s voice is low when he says, “Erik has agreed to check in with Alistair when he gets to Austin. So we know he’s safe that far south.”

In spite of everything, Henry cannot stifle a chuckle. “I’m sure Alistair will be just _delighted_ to welcome a fugitive.” The very _thought_ of it. Alistair, all tightly leashed stillness and unsmiling lips, eyeing everything about Erik, deciding without ever uttering a word to keep him at arm’s length and then some.

“Maybe they can bond over both having to high-tail it out of a town in the dead of night.”

A laugh bubbles up inside of him, catches him off guard, and pain briefly sears in his chest. He hunches over, buries his fist deep in his right side to contain it, but the cough rips through him, and he gags, chokes, sweat breaking out cold on his forehead, vision swimming. He manages a wheezing gasp, feels it rattle deep in his lungs, and another cough catches in his throat, the bitter taste of iron and salt in the back of his throat though the blood never comes.

Sloshing of whiskey, rim of a glass cold against his lips, Warren’s hand steadying on the back of his neck, and he manages a sip, a second, closes his mouth tight to silence another cough, then regrets it when it feels like razorblades slicing his throat. His heart pounds hard as he gets his breath, head feeling suddenly too heavy, and arms wrap around him, pull him close, Warren’s cheek cool against his forehead. He leans into him, the arms tightening around him, for a long time neither of them speak, Warren’s lips light kissing his hair, and focuses on the rhythm of his easy breaths. In, and out. And in, and out. Trying to match himself to someone who has never struggled for air once in his life, and the task feels Herculean, but eventually, eventually, his head stops spinning, and he sighs.

There are no pointless questions, no asking if he’s all right when he’s clearly not. It’s one of the things he’s always liked about Warren, even when they were merely acquaintances – he knows when not to ask.

But still. Whether he asks or not the man is concerned, so Henry murmurs a simple, “I’m fine,” and his voice is hoarse, and weak even to his own ears.

Warren’s grip shifts, one hand resting warm on his back, a familiar settling weight. “You should be in bed.”

“So should you.” It is nothing less than the truth. The best part of two days on the trail, and getting grazed to boot, and helping a wanted murderer in and out of a window. Of course he ought to be in bed. “Shouldn’t…strain the muscles…too much. The bleeding…might start.” Too many words at once are still enough to leave him breathless. _Damn_ his illness.

“Henry—”

“Warren.” His tone is final. Oh, Lord, how he’s tired of this old argument.

Warren nods slowly against him, and the matter is dropped. At least for tonight. But it will raise its head again the next time he has a bad spell. How he pushes himself too hard. How he doesn’t take good enough care. How he needs to rest more and smoke less and get more air. But Christ it’s his death isn’t it? So what if it comes about a little sooner than expected? Better than lingering on confined to bed, fighting for every gasped breath.

Still though. Warren is injured. And sitting here holding him up is not going to keep him out of pain, or help him heal any faster. “Sure you don’t…want laudanum for it?” _Your wound,_ he means, and refrains from adding, _to help you sleep_ , but Warren shakes his head.

“It’s just a scratch.” But every movement of his has been stiff, delicate, and even now he is angling his injured side away, and he surely must have pulled at the wound when he was helping Erik in and out of the window. “I’ve had worse breaking colts and branding.”

There is a faint smile to his words, and it is enough to set Henry’s heart fluttering again, and leave him a little more breathless. Sometimes he forgets (or tries to forget, because it distracts him at inopportune moments) the time Warren spent working as a ranch hand before they met. The image of him – even if it is solely a mental one, compiled through musing and observation – in plaid cotton and leather chaps, with his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, the vein in his arm popping, leather gloves protecting his hands but barely covering his wrists, holding a branding iron, is rather arresting, and the memory of the invented image is enough that Henry feels faint again, and he’s grateful all over for those same strong arms around him.

Warren chuckles into his hair as if he knows what he is thinking, and he probably does that devilish man. Then his hand slides into Henry’s waistcoat pocket, and withdraws the deck of cards, as he sits back, and smiles.

“Well if both of us are in denial,” he says, “we may try to keep ourselves occupied.” And at Henry’s answering smile, he starts to shuffle.


	9. Fix You

Even sitting down, he is more breathless than usual. It happens occasionally, a consequence of not enough sleep, his lungs working harder to keep him upright. He should have been expecting it really. It was bound to happen sooner or later after the last three days. Christ, three days. Is that all it’s been?

And on the fourth day, the Lord dictated that Henry’s lungs rebel. It might almost be a sermon.

It is why he handed his cigars over to Warren, for safe-keeping. So he would not be tempted to smoke when he is already compromised. But Christ, how his fingers itch to fiddle with one, to strike it up. Even the deck of cards cannot soothe the restlessness in them, and if he plays one more game of solitaire he is certain his brain will bleed, not just his lungs.

(There was a spatter of pink froth on his handkerchief from his coughing fit just after dawn, and he hid it so Warren would not see it and worry. Not a haemorrhage, thankfully, just mild irritation, but still.)

At least Abraham Morris arrived back into town this morning, and relieved him from being the only doctor. Nearly everyone prefers seeing Morris than seeing him anyway, except in cases of extreme emergency, and he can hardly blame them. If he were a healthy man he doubts if he’d want his doctor to be prone to coughing in the middle of treating him. It is only to be expected that they would be wary of him.

No wonder he’s taken to cards. So damn hard to make a living at anything else sometimes. The cards have never flinched under his hands.

His legs are cramping up. If it were not for the breathlessness he would get up and walk around to give them ease. As it is he sighs, and stretches them out, feels a tingle in his shins as the blood is reminded to flow again. Fahim doesn’t stir, lost in peaceful dreams. Maybe he is dreaming about Erik. Surely they are nice dreams, if he is, comforting dreams.

Erik must be well away by now.

For all their sakes, he’d better be.

* * *

 

Erik. The very name makes him want to smile. Erik came to him through the darkness, looked at him with soft eyes and kissed him, his voice so low it was like silk wrapping him, cradling him.

His eyes flicker open, world filled with watery light, misty. All of it floating, drifting by him.

A face coalesces, forms. Hollow cheeks and shining blue eyes, sweat beading the forehead, and the lips twitch, smile. That face. He knows that face.

“Your man is safe, don’t worry,” and the voice is hoarse, cough-roughened. “You just rest. He’ll be waiting for you when you’re strong enough.” Fingers lightly brush his forehead, a hand curling around his. “Just rest.”

The light dims, the face swallowed up, and he sighs, Erik’s lips brushing his forehead once more.

* * *

 

The landlady is a rather alluring woman. That much she can say for her. Blonde hair neatly pinned back, blue bonnet blue eyes, sharp features, probably only in her early thirties. The sharp features add something to her that fires a longing deep in Etta’s gut, and she smooths her fingers over her lapel, clamps down on it.

The landlady – Mrs Cummings, Warren said, her name was in one of his letters — is very different to Carlotta. Then again, most women are very different to Carlotta.

Praise be for that.

At the same time, different she might be from Carlotta, Mrs Cummings clearly disapproves of finding a woman on her doorstep, covered in dust and in male attire. Though Etta will grant that this shirt is one of her favourites, and she’s always found this suit comfortable for travelling in, it does tend to garner her looks when some people realise she has been riding astride. Well of course she’s been riding astride. It’s the only way to travel decently on a horse.

Besides, it was only this morning that she pulled this waistcoat from her saddlebags, so she would have some semblance of propriety upon arriving in town. To hell with disapproving glances.

It was a three-day hard ride from Austin, more than two hundred miles, so it’s no wonder her legs are aching. It’s been a while since she’s ridden anywhere near as hard as that, and Paint will not have forgiven her by the time she is ready to head back for Austin. Between the ache and the telegram, she is not in the mood to face down a disapproving landlady, however attractive and appealing that disapproving landlady may be.

Well, she is going to have to deal with her, one way or the other. And this is the woman who is landlady to Fahim, as well as to Henry and Warren. A fresh wave of nausea hits her at the fact of Fahim being shot. The whole way here she has been trying not to think of it, though it is what sent her riding out of Austin, pretty much the moment that Warren’s telegram arrived. And Alistair went white as soon as he read what it said, and was relieved that Anna was in school so she couldn’t ask him about it.

Though the telegram did specify that Henry was tending to Fahim. And she very much doubts that Henry wants to be disturbed, even by her, and especially if Fahim is still in a bad way. The telegram was vague on those details, only that it was serious. And she would rather find out Fahim’s condition from either Henry or Warren and not a stranger, so she asks for Warren, if he is in, and reminds herself to call him Mister Stapp. She is so used to when he was using Taylor as his surname that Stapp weighs oddly on her tongue. It lacks all of the finesse of Taylor. Such a terrible name to choose for himself. If it had been _her_ choice, she would have gone for something much more stylistic. And she’s sure that Henry would have too.

“Unfortunately, Mister Stapp is out on business. I believe he may be down at the Enola saloon. He deals faro there,” and Mrs Cummings’ voice is polite if formal, “but Doctor Russell is in, if he would be any good to you.”

And by the tone of her voice, Etta can tell that the landlady is hoping she’ll choose to follow Warren down to the saloon, instead of talking to Henry. But the very mention that Henry is in gives her license to talk to him, and sensing it will annoy the good Mrs Cummings, she puts on her best smile and says, “It will do just the same to see the doctor.”

Mrs Cummings purses her lips, but does not argue, and with a simple, “follow me,” she turns around and leads Etta down a hall and up a staircase, then down another hall and knocks on the second door to the right. Etta has already decided that it is most likely Fahim’s room that Henry is in, so it’s no surprise when the landlady opens the door, and over her shoulder she sees a figure by a bed, and recognizes Fahim’s head on a pillow in said bed. Though she swallows and braces herself just the same.

It is a little unsteadying, to see him unconsciousness.

But before she can take in much of Fahim, Henry turns to face the door, and her stomach drops to see him. He is paler than he was in Austin three months ago, a faint grey tinge to his face, dark circles under his eyes and his champagne waistcoat hanging looser than ever. He’ll have to get the seams taken in again, and all at once she is overcome with sadness for him, any relief at Fahim being clearly still alive overcome by worry for the both of them.

Henry will kill himself if he keeps on like this, and her throat tightens but she fights back the threatening tears. What must Warren think

Mrs Cummings does not give any sign of being unduly alarmed. Perhaps she simply is used to seeing him like this. “There is a woman here asking to see you,” and her voice is matter-of-fact, but that very matter-of-factness carries a weight of distaste.

“Did she give her name?” Henry is slightly hoarser than she remembers him being. Another realization that makes her feel ill.

She pushes her way in, past Mrs Cummings (no harm done to shove her out of the way). “It’s me, Henry.” Her hair has grown out since they last met, true, but hardly to the extent that she is unrecognizable. What other woman would wear a man’s suit after all?

Henry blinks rapidly, and a faint smile twitches at his lips. “Good to see you,” he says, and with one hand on the bedside locker he pushes himself to his feet. Dear sweet Henry, ever the gentleman, determined to be on his feet in the presence of a lady, though no one else would ever consider her a lady. But he must stand too fast, or else the very effort takes too much of a toll on his lungs, because what little colour he has drains from his face, and his eyes roll, the whites suddenly clear, and Etta’s heart lurches as she rushes forward.

He hits the floor with a soft thud before she can catch him.

* * *

 

Someone is shaking him, a hand on his shoulder, but he’s too tired, he’s so tired, why won’t they just let him sleep? Muttered words, too fast for him to follow the thread of.

“…get him to bed. Where’s his room?” He recognizes the cadence of it, the musicality. Etta. Etta? Why is she waking him? Did a cowhand get one of her women in trouble?

“Just down the hall.” But—that’s Mrs Cummings. How does Etta know Mrs Cummings?

“Good. We’ll get him there, then I’ll get the doctor and find Warren.” Warren. Where’s Warren? Why isn’t he here? There was something about Fahim, something about blood loss and infection. Is he with Fahim? He must be. He would be worried and when Warren’s worried he hovers. It’s what he does.

Hands, under his arms. But none of it makes any sense, and it’s so much easier to just sleep than to try to fathom it. Just to sleep.

* * *

 

The last time she was in Fort Griffin, the Alhambra was the biggest saloon in town, which made her reflect that there seems to be an Alhambra in every damn town. Now the Alhambra has become the Enola thanks to a change of ownership, but it looks the very same as ever. A fact that Etta is grateful for this morning when she wants to find Warren.

It is still before noon, and at such an early hour the saloons are quiet, and the Enola is no different. There are only a handful of daytime patrons, a few soldiers down from the fort and a couple of drifters. She finds Warren sitting in on a poker game, holding his cards with one hand, tapping the edge of the table with the other, and her heart twists because that is something he definitely, undoubtedly, picked up off Henry.

He looks up at the sound of the door, ever-wary, and frowns when he recognises her as she crosses the room. One of the soldiers gapes, and a drifter fumbles his cards, but her attention is all taken up by Warren.

Who lowers his own cards slowly. “Etta? What are you—?”

No time for such nonsense now. There’ll be all the time in the world to catch up later. “Not now. Henry’s collapsed and the doctor is seeing to him.”

He blinks a moment, and the colour drains from his face when her words dawn on him, a single “fuck” slipping from his lips. Then he jumps up, and without a backward glance races out of the saloon.

She gathers his money off the table, and runs to catch up.

* * *

 

More words. Too many words, fading in and out like the pulse of a dying consumptive. It is almost ironic and he might laugh but laughing would tear his lungs and he’d end up choking on iron and salt.

“…to bed…foreseeable future…extensive crepitation in his left…overexcitement compounded by exhaustion…” Clinical, serious. Must be about one of his patients. “Keep…comfortable…window if…gets too warm…”

“Will he—” The undercurrent of fear in two short words. Warren. But Warren is never afraid unless it’s about him and even then it’s when he’s coughing blood, and Warren tries to hide it, that he’s afraid, but he always knows and he hates making him afraid, he hates it but he can’t help it. His lungs always fight him.

“...up and about again before...know it...needs to let himself rest…must not talk too much…essential…gets as much sleep as possible.”

A murmur of agreement, lost in the morass. “I’ll check in on Deputy Iravani before I leave.”

And at last, at last there is a flicker of light, fluttering through the darkness. And for an enchanted hanging moment, Warren’s face swims before him, gentle and creased, before the darkness flows back in and brings him with it.

* * *

 

Erik’s lips. He would know the twist of them anywhere, traced them as they lay together beneath the stars. Those lips, pressed to his, sweet and welcome, the impression of them lingering in his skin. But Erik is not here now, because if he were here he would be able to feel it, to know. There is someone else but not Erik, not Erik, words murmured half in thought but not Erik.

“…wound healing well…excellent surgical work…” A hand brushes his side, presses down, and pain flashes through him, spears him, a faint hiss of breath. “…still some tenderness of course…to be expected…but hopeful…hopeful…”

* * *

 

The coffee has gone cold. Mrs Cummings made it for her when she returned with Warren, as if it were simply a matter of course, and then she quietly disappeared, but Etta could not bear to drink the coffee. The beans she had for breakfast threatened to revolt at the very thought of it.

Every minute slipping by feels like hours. She drums her fingers on the edge of the table, tries to recall the piano fingering that Henry showed her once when they were both drunk. She cannot even remember what the name of the piece was, or if it had a name. It could have been something that he just let his fingers wander and pick out. But the image has always stuck with her of him staring idly out the window, drumming his fingers on the back of his deck of cards, and playing a silver dollar over the knuckles of his left hand.

He has always had beautiful hands. Fahim too, and Warren. Most men, in fact, have hands that are lovely in one way or another. She teased the three of them once that they could get women to vote on whose hands were the most lovely (and Henry’s lip twitched and he said that they might never lose the taste of voting if they started), organise a betting racket around the affair with odds and all. Warren’s hands, big and strong, hardened by rough work. Henry’s, long-fingered and elegant, palms soft but fingers callused by surgical instruments. Fahim’s, darker, steady and unwavering, and so gentle with horses. She could not say who would win. It would be a close-run thing any way.

(Of course, she has seen many women with beautiful hands too. Women always have beautiful hands, it is a simple fact of life, and Carlotta’s are particularly talented.)

But try as she may, she cannot recall the fingering that Henry taught her. And the thought of his hands reminds her of his fingers, stained with his own blood, stained with her blood too once, and the beans threaten again to revolt so she takes a sip of the cold coffee to keep them in place.

In spite of the stiffness aching in her legs, she cannot bear to sit a moment longer. Better suffer the protestations of her limbs and try to ease the restlessness inside than to keep sitting. And when she paces, sometimes she can turn her thoughts to other things, less worrying things, but this time she keeps seeing Fahim’s still face before her, or the way Henry swayed, for only the barest flicker of a moment, before he crumpled. She should have seen it faster, should have realised what it meant. His weakness, his illness. He has been ill as long as she has known him, but never has she seen him collapse. She’s seen him afterwards, too many times, in and out of consciousness or hacking up his lungs, or sleeping peacefully when the crisis has passed. But never has she seen him in the second when life drains from his face.

She swallows down the bile that burns her throat, stops and takes another mouthful of her cold coffee before resuming her pacing.

She never wants to see him collapse like that again.

And Fahim. It was Fahim that brought her here. The telegram bearing the news of his wound. Someone shot him. Someone, some bastard who saw him and thought him an easy target, or who hated him for his skin, or who had some imagined grievance, shot him and left him on death’s door. And that bastard caused Henry’s collapse, because Henry wouldn’t have worn himself out if Fahim had not been shot, and between what’s happened to the two of them she wishes she could find him, wishes she could take him and break his nose and his teeth and tear him apart. Lord help her, but Henry and Fahim are two of the best men she’s ever known, treated her with perfect cordiality (which is more than can be said for most) even before any friendship developed. And that bastard did this to them. Has left them suffering and in pain.

It’s all she can do to stifle a scream. But if she screams then she might disturb either of them upstairs, and they both need their rest. She bites down and keeps it inside, and balls her hand into a fist so tight she can feel her nails digging into her palm. She will find this man. She will find him and make him pay if it’s the last thing she can do. And she will apologise to Alistair for breaking his faith in her inherent goodness. But she will do it and she will not regret it, not for a moment.

Footsteps on the stairs draw her attention, break the flow of her thoughts though her vow has been made. It could be some boarder, but it could be Warren or the doctor and if there is any chance of news—

She is out of the kitchen and at the foot of the stairs before she has time to re-consider. Her heart stalls when she recognises the doctor, his face grim, and for the life of her she cannot remember his name, but it hardly matters now, not when he is leaving, not when he looks so serious, his hat tilted ever so slightly forward, hiding the hair greying at his temples.

Before he reaches the bottom step, she is ready to ask how they are, but she does not get the chance to. He takes one appraising look at her, and stops on the third step up, then smiles, ever so slightly. “Your friend Doctor Russell will be all right.” The sudden relief leaves her legs numb, and she grips the banister to steady herself as the doctor continues on, “he’s just pushed himself too hard. And the Deputy is recovering as well as can be expected for such a recent wound.” His smile drops, and he eyes her carefully. “Now, Miss. I suggest you get some rest yourself.”

And she nods, and murmurs that she will, and he brushes past her as he takes his leave but he does not understand. She will not be able to rest until she knows who did this.

* * *

 

_The blood wells up between his fingers, and he presses down, brings the full weight of his body against the wound but the blood keeps coming and he can’t take his hands away, can’t reach for a clamp or the blood will gush, can’t get his needle or a length of catgut and his hands are slick, the handkerchief soaked through, and Fahim groans beneath his hands, whimpers, but he can’t do anything because of the blood and there’s no one else, there’s only him, and a cough catches in his throat, but he can’t hold it in, it comes with the force of a train, pain ripping through his chest and he’s falling, falling, falling onto Fahim—_

Weak whimpers reach his ears, a hand cradling his cheek, fingers tangled in his hair. “Sshhh, Henry, ssshhh, you’re all right, you’re all right.” Warren is hoarse but he’s wrong, he’s wrong. He can feel the cough coming and he can’t stop it, and Fahim is dying because he can’t stop his cough, can’t stop the blood. He tastes it burning hot in the back of his mouth, and the hand leaves his cheek, is on his shoulder, his back, rolling him over, and he hacks, gags, feels the blood wet on his lips, a cotton cloth wiping it away.

“Don’t try to hold it back.” Warren’s voice is soft in his ear. “It’ll be worse if you try to hold it back. Just let it out.”

He moans, and gags, and gasps his way through the fit, his head pounding, and slowly the pain ebbs away. The rim of a glass pressed to his lips, bitter taste of whiskey on his tongue washing away the blood and he spits, sips another mouthful. It burns his throat as he swallows. A faint brush of lips to his temple, and Warren’s hands, rolling him over, back onto his pillows.

His eyelids flicker, soft light filtering through the lashes, and a tear slips free. (When did he start crying? He can’t—can’t remember.) Faintly he sees Warren, a slight smile twitching at his lips, his eyes gentle. Fingertips brush his hair off his forehead, and Warren leans in, presses his lips to his cheek. “Don’t cry, darling,” he whispers. “Don’t cry. You’re going to be fine. It’s just a little irritation, that’s all. That’s all. Don’t cry.”

He feels another tear trickle free, and Warren kisses his cheek again, and again, and his eyes slip closed, too heavy to keep open. His fingers twitch, brush Warren’s sleeve, and Warren takes his hand and squeezes it, kissing the corner of his eye. “You’ll be all right, darling. You’ll be all right. And so will Fahim. I love you. Just rest. Just rest.”

And the soft line of kisses pressed to his forehead are the only thing he knows. And all he needs to know. He turns his head, and sighs, and Warren kisses all the pain away.


	10. Heartbeats

The street is a cacophony of shouting, laughing, tinkling piano music from the different saloons, and she is overwhelmed with the sudden desire for _something_ , but can’t place her finger on it. Something which is not here. Something which is possibly not anywhere.

The old loneliness aches deep within her soul, and she flexes her fingers, swallows it down, tries to focus on her task at hand. Visit each of the saloons (and there are maybe thirty of them of some description still operating, though Fort Griffin is past its prime), scope out their clientele. She has no idea who or what she is looking for, has not even spoken to Warren about what he knows about who shot Fahim. There has not been time yet, and she hates to pull him away when Henry is ill.

It is a terrible act of cruelty to pull him away when Henry is ill.

She is bordering on Edwin tonight, hair pinned up under her hat, a darker suit selected. It could do with being pressed after travelling cross-country in her saddlebags, but no harm done. The creases add to her appearance, and she will not argue with that. Her waistcoat is her one concession to colour – dark grey with a deep purple swirl pattern overlaid. It highlights the slimness of her figure, curves hidden away beneath binding. Edwin, but not quite Edwin. As if the allure of the inbetween will be enough to gain her answers.

She is too philosophical for all of this tonight, but she presses on. She owes it to Fahim, and to Henry, to press on.

After traipsing through five saloons, and not quite knowing what she’s learned only that the town has an overabundance of saloons now that it’s population is dwindling, she arrives at the Enola. It is a great deal more crowded now than it was when she fetched Warren from it earlier, a cowhand at the piano playing ‘Red River Valley’ rather poorly, a contrast to the drunk in the corner singing about Skibbereen in a hoarse voice, and all around are poker and faro games, men in suits and others still wearing the dust and grit of the range gathered around the tables, sweat-soaked and grizzly. She has a sudden wave of feeling overdressed. And she is certain _that_ is a flash of Confederate-grey fabric, fourteen years out of date but still in use. These damn Texans never did know how to let go.

The chatter of voices with the music is almost enough to deafen her thoughts, and she sighs, buys a bottle of whiskey, and moves towards a table at the back, occupied by one blond cavalry officer, his blue uniform as out of place as she is. And if she settles in beside him, she will be unremarkable, and watch the room in peace.

* * *

 

His body aches as he drifts towards wakefulness, legs stiff and arms weighing leaden. With each breath he can feel the razorblades slice his chest, taste remembered blood metallic on the back of his tongue. Not a particular lobe this time, so far as he can tell, though the left lung feels slightly worse than the right, both sets of alveoli, bronchioles, bronchi screaming, trachea begging for rest. Once, in medical school, he dissected the trachea of a pauper who died from a lung haemorrhage. Ulcerated and raw, dark with the clotted blood that suffocated that soul, the image swims before him again, and he shivers, whines when the pain in his chest briefly worsens.

He had two good lungs back then, a whole life unfurling on and on, until the Fates saw fit to laugh at him.

He lost all bitterness the first time Warren’s lips met his, but the memory of it lingers in his veins.

His eyes flicker open, the room swimming before him, fuzzy at the edges. Dimly he makes out Warren, sitting in the chair beside the bed. He is half-slumped in sleep, fingers twined loosely with Henry’s own. He cannot muster the strength to squeeze them, so he settles for brushing his thumb over them, the smooth skin more welcome than anything else in the world. The light is low (or is it just that his eyes are fighting to stay open?), and soft, casting Warren’s hair copper, faintly glowing, and Henry’s heart stalls in his chest. He is too tired to move, too tired to try and wake him though how he craves to hear his voice, but he is certain that Warren has never looked so beautiful before. And tears water in his eyes, but he cannot look away, not when this vision is sitting beside him.

* * *

 

His head pounds with pain, a throbbing in behind his eyes like a hammer tapping at the inside of his skull. He opens his eyes and the room is dark but it sways, spinning over and over out of control and bile burns up in his throat, so he swallows it, closes his eyes again, an aching stiffness lingering deep beneath his ribs. He shifts to try and ease it, to get some relief, but a sharp bolt of pain lances through him and he whimpers, tears prickling his eyes.

But there is no one to hear, no one to come to him. He risks opening one eye, and finds he is thoroughly alone, the last man left in the world. The very last, everyone else dead or fled.

His thoughts spin and he tries to catch them, bridle them, get some control back. Alone, yes, and he closes his eye again against the swimming dark. Alone but—but Erik was here, wasn’t he? Here with him? Or was it a dream? And Henry was here, whispering to him, telling him about asking Warren to kiss him, about his man being safe. Who is his man? Erik, maybe (hopefully). But if Henry was here, where is he now?

They were both here, Henry and Erik both. He can feel it.

A shuffle, boots dragging on a rug, and the room swims before him again. Does he imagine it, or is it real? Golden eyes shining in the darkness, like two tiny pinpricks of candlelight. An involuntary gasp, and a brief stab of pain, a soft finger pressed lightly to his lips. “Do not speak, Fahim. There is no need for you to. I just had to see you again.”

The tears well up and he is powerless to fight them, the relief numbing. Erik is here, and he would cry an ocean of tears in celebration of that.

* * *

 

She cannot be certain what time it is, only that it is late, and she has regained herself from the fractured state she was in earlier. It is well past midnight, most likely. The best part of the last hour was lost in a fumbled encounter with a lady of the night, who she paid handsomely from the five hundred dollars she won in a poker game, and she very much doubts if the lady in question had any _issue_ with the affair. In fact, Etta suspects that she enjoyed it far more than any of her many liaisons with these damn Texans, and, two-to-one, ended up better paid for it too.

Heading back for the boardinghouse with a bottle of whiskey and four hundred dollars, give or take, Etta is tired to her bones, but it is a content sort of tiredness as opposed to an aching one. Or at least, as content a sort of tiredness as it can be, given the circumstances. She learned nothing at all of use from her night, and makes a mental note to interrogate Warren for all he knows in the morning.

God, but she couldn’t keep from thinking of Henry and Fahim all night. If she had been able to clear her thoughts, she would have won at least another three hundred.

Maybe tomorrow night her luck will be better.

She can only hope.

Tonight, she’ll settle for checking in on both of them. Odds are they’ll be asleep, but she’ll not be able to sleep herself until she sees them and knows for sure.

And after seeing them, she’ll head up to the attic room. Warren vouched for her with Mrs Cummings so that she can stay there, and though she doubts that the good landlady was too impressed she’ll take what she’s given. Better the attic room than sleeping out somewhere on the dew-damp ground.

Or maybe she’ll just sleep in the chair by Fahim’s bed.

She hasn’t decided yet.

* * *

 

A knock on the door jolts him awake, a whine slipping from his throat with the sudden pain in his chest. A soft flicker of light, and a hand smooths back his hair, lips brushing. “It’s all right, darling. I’ll get it. Go back to sleep.” Warren’s words are softly blurred, and Henry sighs, the flicker of light darkening away.

The hand disappears from his hair. Scraping of chair legs on the floor, clack of boots on hardwood, creaking of the door. A jumble of little noises, each of them grating on his ears.

Hushed voices, the words flowing around him though he makes no attempt to grasp them. Warren, “...sleeping…a little easier than…earlier...”

Sloshing of a bottle, woman’s voice. “…case his cough gets bad...” Whiskey. Is it whiskey? Oh Lord, let it be whiskey. He can feel it burning in his throat already.

More words, tear heavy, impossible to make out, and a rustle of clothes. Then the woman’s voice comes again. “...just take care of your man, all right? I’ll check on Fahim…” He knows that voice. Why does he know it? He can feel it prickling somewhere in the back of his mind, the name that goes with it. Not Mrs Cummings, someone else. Someone—

There was something about Etta before, wasn’t there? Is it Etta? Is she here? _Why_ is she here? It’s not—not adding up. Dim snatch of auburn hair, of hands on his shoulders. It _is_ Etta. But why is it her?

Before he can try to fathom it, he hears the creak of the door closing, the boots tracking back across the floor, the soft distinctive thud of a bottle being set down, and with a tremendous effort he opens his eyes, finds the shape of Warren blurred, and reaches his aching stiff fingers for his hand.

“Come to bed.” His voice is barely a croak. “No point…sitting there all night.” Warren always gets peevish when he sleeps in chairs. It upsets his back.

(And how he aches for him, to feel the warmth of him, to hear his heart beating beneath his ear. It is a bone deep craving for contact. He was only half a man until he met Warren, and Warren is the only one who can make him whole, to ease the grating within. He has not drawn a full breath in years, and never will again, but with Warren beside him, holding him, he does not miss breathing.)

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Warren’s voice is softly hoarse, and he recognises the roughness of past crying, knows what he means. _I don’t want the shifting of the bed to hurt your chest, I don’t want you to start coughing, I don’t want your lungs to start bleeding because of me._

His eyes slip closed against his will. _None of that matters. I just want you, to feel your arms around me_. Too many words and he hasn’t the breath for them, not for a one of them. “You won’t.” _I’d bear a thousand years of pain if you would just hold me._

He is already drifting when the bed dips, and a kiss is pressed to his forehead. Arms wrap around him, draw him close, and the sighing of Warren’s breath is the focus of his world.

* * *

 

He's too tired to speak, too tired to even try to think of something to say, but he does not need to, not with Erik here, sitting beside him, their fingers entwined on top of his chest, Erik’s head resting on the pillow next to his, lips pressed to his cheek.

He is not certain that he is not dreaming. But if he is dreaming he never wants to wake up.

If he could bear to move he would try to press himself closer to Erik, but the very thought is enough to make the pain prickle sharper, make him become suddenly aware of it.

He whimpers, and Erik shushes him, squeezing his fingers tighter.

“Do you want laudanum?” The question comes low in his ear.

Laudanum would give him relief, would banish the pain. But if he takes laudanum it will pull him under again, will pull him away from Erik. And he would rather suffer the pain than to lose even a minute. “No.” It is too much effort to pull together anything else to say, to explain himself. But what need have they for explanations now when they have this?

The silence is soft and sweet. And for a long time the only sound in the darkness is their breathing. He could listen to Erik’s breathing forever, gentle in his ear. But then, slowly, comes:

“The moment you are up to traveling, we’ll ride for Mexico. Just the two of us, together.” Erik’s words are soft, soft as a stream rippling over a stone ledge, glistening golden under the sun, almost soothing enough to be a lullaby, but he is not singing. “Or Indian Territory. On for Kansas, the Dakota country. Somewhere away from here. Wherever you want to go. Just you, and I. And no one will harm you ever again, no one will dare consider it. And we’ll lie out beneath the stars, the whole world before us, and just lie together, like this, holding on. And I’ll sing for you. Everyone has always said I have a lovely voice. And I’ll show you magic tricks, and we’ll explore together, free from everyone…”

He drifts on the sea of promises, a spell wrapping around him. Him and Erik, free and together, alone. Riding along the river or across the range, curled in each other’s arms beneath a stand of trees. The images flicker before him, an endless trickle, half memory half fantasy, and Erik keeps murmuring, voice softer, lower, and Fahim sighs, feels himself slowly slip beneath the waves.

The snick of the door shatters the moment, light searing behind his closed eyes and he squeezes them tighter, Erik silent, vanished, hand suddenly cold without his on top. Click, as if of a pistol being cocked, and sweat beads cold on his forehead, heart racing.

“You touch that gun I’ll burn you down.”

The words are cold and hard, voice not deep enough to be Erik’s. Who is it? What—what’s happening?

The world is blurry when he forces his eyes open, Erik a silhouette beside him, hand hovering at his hip, at the shining pearl handle of his pistol. He blinks hard, wills his vision to sharpen. Dimly by the door he makes out a slim figure, red hair stark against a black suit.

Red hair?

Thud as the door closes, and the voice comes again, the one that goes with that hair, that suit, the jangle of two pistols in those hands, covering Erik so he can’t move.

“Who the hell are you?”


	11. Letters

She knew the balance of probability was that there would be whiskey in the drawer of the locker beside Fahim’s bed. If Fahim himself did not have it for “emergencies” then Henry would be sure to have a bottle to hand while keeping any sort of vigil over him. And if Henry had somehow not had the foresight to do that, then Warren would absolutely make certain to have a supply. Can’t have Henry being crippled by chest pain when he needs his wits about him.

She finds three-quarters of an open bottle, and feels a touch smug that she knows those men so well.

It is Erik who has forced her to drink. She had – no doubt about it – had more than enough for one night before stumbling upon him in Fahim’s room. And Etta has never been one to let herself be unnerved by any man (though Edwin has, she’ll grant, been bowled over a time or two) but she is a little _unsteady_ after meeting Erik. To put it mildly.

She has often wondered if she would ever meet the infamous Erik.

She never expected that it would be like this. A pleasure, to be certain. His work is highly skilled, and she is but a humble admirer.

They credited the Los Gatos murders to him, and never tracked him. Then there was that incident in Wichita with one of the Earp brothers. She can’t remember which, and it doesn’t much matter. Artistically, she can appreciate the gutting in Biloxi, and they say he was involved in some fantastic rope work in the Dakota territory, which was a joy to behold, so she’s heard. Though that story has been embellished to say that it was he who shot Hickok in the back, and not Jack McCall. She may not actually _know_ Erik, but backshooting does not sound like his style. And there was that story about he and that dentist Holliday in Dodge last year, each accusing the other of cheating. He winged Holliday when he pulled the trigger, but Holliday’s bullet missed him and they were both hauled up and fined for disturbing the peace. Though Holliday apparently fixed up his teeth afterwards, so there must not have been any bad feelings between them.

She met Holliday once, and he reminded her a bit of Henry, but harder. And that Hungarian woman was _not_ doing him any favours, but after one of their falling outs, Etta swooped in and had a _most_ enjoyable night with her, so she certainly can’t fault the man for taste.

But the moment it dawned on her that it was _Erik_ standing beside Fahim’s bed (and it took a little longer than she would have liked or will ever admit, and she’ll pray to God for Fahim to not remember her asking who the hell he was), her finger wavered on the trigger, and it was only Fahim’s weak “don’t shoot” that kept her from firing.

Erik had her covered in a heartbeat anyway, so she’ll consider them about even.

The story came out between gasped breaths of Fahim’s, Erik still regarding her warily. How he had arrested Erik, how, on the journey back, one thing led to another and they became lovers, of the agreement that he, Fahim, would ride into town and hand in his badge before rejoining Erik. And the whole thing is so wild, so fantastical, so unlike anything in a million years that she ever expected to hear, that she has no doubt she would not believe it, if it were not Fahim telling it. But she has never known Fahim to lie to her, not even about poker, and the very idea that Fahim would lie to her when he is so ill, so frail, is unthinkable.

She’s always suspected that Fahim appreciates the company of both men and women in much the same way she does, but to have it confirmed by coming across _the_ Erik at his sickbed is just—it’s a little more than she can wrap her head around _without_ more whiskey.

Fahim is sleeping now, thanks to the laudanum that Erik insisted he take, but she leans in anyway, and with her lips to his ear whispers, “we need to talk about your taste in men.”

They really _do_ need to talk about it.

She takes another mouthful of the whiskey, and leans back in her chair.

It is some time since Erik left, but the more she thinks about him the more she finds there is nothing, really, about him that she can take issue with. Yes, he has some murders to his name, but he is hardly unique in that regard. In fact, he is all the more admirable for coming back here to see Fahim even knowing that he is a wanted man.

His knowledge of what happened to Fahim has come secondhand from Warren, but he has more concrete information than she does. The poker game – and three thousand dollars is a lot of money, no bones about it – with Henry and Warren and the gambler and shotgun rider. If she could find the gambler and the shotgun rider, perhaps they would hold some answer. Peculiar, though, that the money was not taken. Warren banked it for Fahim the day after, to keep it safe.

Still, if she had to choose between the two of them, the gambler is used to loss. And a shotgun rider has taken that job for a reason, and must have some confidence in his skills. She’ll have to ask Warren for descriptions of the two of them. Depending on how well he felt that night, Henry’s own memory may or may not be reliable.

She sets the bottle down, sighs and stretches and stands, crosses to the window. It is an unconscious movement, bracing her hand on the edge of the wall over her head, rocking her hips forward. But when, in a brief flash of a moment, she remembers Henry doing the same thing a hundred, a thousand times, all through their long friendship, her heart twists and tears prickle her eyes.

Henry. Oh, Henry.

And off in the distance, a faint brown lightening of the sky whispers of the coming dawn.

* * *

 

It is full daylight when he wakes again, the world soft white. He has not the time to savour it before his lungs clench and his breath catches in his throat. He hacks and chokes and gags his way into the morning, half-rolled on his side, and in the breaths between coughs sips at the glass of whiskey that keeps being pressed to his lips. When, at last, he’s able to take three breaths without spluttering, he gulps down a full glass, and slumps back on his pillows, lets his eyes slip closed and wills his heart to settle. It’s pounding in his chest like a racehorse thundering down the track and if his heart doesn’t slow down then he can’t get his breath and if he can’t get his breath he’ll start coughing again, he’ll choke.

He gasps through gritted teeth, the fingers tapping on the back of his hand pulling him back. Warren, here. Warren, keeping him sane, keeping him together. Warren, Warren, Warren, two syllables, his heart pounding out his name, contraction and release, systolic and diastolic pressures. The fingers wrap around his hand, squeeze and then withdraw, and at last he pulls in a full breath, swallowing back the urge to cough.

For a long time he can only lie there, too weak to move, too tired to open his eyes, and sleep is tugging at him, luring him, but he will not give into sleep. Not now, not again, not when he’s only woken up and gotten his breath back. He’s slept enough.  He needs to see Warren.

It is that thought, that one precious thought, of needing Warren, of having to see him, that gives him the strength to open his eyes again.

The room is blurry with the tears of his exertion, and he blinks them away, fights to focus. Slowly, slowly, Warren coalesces, sitting by the bed, a bundle of letters in his lap. And the sight of him, as if plucked forth from his dreams, is enough to make his breath catch in his throat.

Warren does not look up. “Etta went for a walk after sun-up and fetched them.” His voice is gentle, soothing, and Henry sighs, sinks into it. “One from Alistair, one from that veterinary surgeon in Abilene. Remember? You said he was so in love with the cavalry officer he was blind to his own feelings. They’re both in Prescott now. One from your brother.” And, lips pursed, he proffers the letter, as if he expects Henry to take it, but though it takes him a tremendous effort, Henry shakes his head.

“Don’t have…the energy…for his pon…tificating.” The few words leave him breathless, and a sudden wave of panic washes over him, that he might have had a haemorrhage, might have a new cavity somewhere deep in one of his lungs. But if he had he would remember the blood, would still be able to taste it, Warren would admonish him not to talk, and the few facts are enough for him to cling to, and gain control of himself back.

“He just worries about you.” And there is the hint of a smile playing around his lips, as if they have not had this same battle ten times before. “Can’t fault him for that.”

“I’ll fault him…all I want. Most stubborn, selfish…boring man I have _ever_ ,” his native accent is getting the upper hand again, the way only Warren or thoughts of his brother or too much whiskey can bring out, and he swallows down a cough, “had the misfortune to be related to.” The cough tries to get the better of him, and he swipes the bottle of whiskey off the nightstand and swallows a mouthful, and a second, and a third.

Warren raises an eyebrow, and deigns not to comment, instead going back to the letter. “I reckon he could say most of that about you.”

“I’ve never been…boring.”

“Most being the operative word.” He sets aside the letters and leans over, eases the bottle from Henry’s grasp. “I have some broth that Mrs Cummings sent up, if you want any of it.”

Broth. The very thought of it is enough to make Henry’s stomach churn, and he closes his eyes. “Not hungry.”

And at last there is the hard edge in Warren’s voice that precipitates a lecture on taking care of himself. “It was not a question.”

* * *

 

The two telegrams from Austin are enough to confront her with the bald reality of what she left behind. The top one is a classic delight. Carlotta, using some choice words to tell her that she is a no good low-down lying bitch of a mule for running out of town without a word the way she did. The whole affair was growing stale anyway, so Etta can’t really be too upset. Any _regret_ over the sudden termination of relations is overshadows by the relief that she is far away from Carlotta and her derringers. She never has less than three on her person at any one time. Crossing her is a threat to life and limb. No. Better that she is here, and Carlotta is all the way down there.

The second telegram is from Alistair, and even as she reads it Etta cannot help but chuckle. He starts off by assuring her that he is relieved that she arrived safely in Fort Griffin, and while that is a comfort to read from him the next line is the kicker, because while he is pleased with her safe arrival, he qualifies it by saying that in future she can deal with the fall-out of her own love affairs.

Whatever Alistair might have thought of Carlotta, but it must have been a shock for Carlotta to be greeted by the totally unruffled Alistair when she went to the house.

Oh, but Etta would have paid any money to see that.

A slight whimper from the bed draws her out of her thoughts, and she leans from the telegrams to Fahim, a faint crease furrowing his brow. It smooths away after a moment, and she combs a hand through her hair. The doctor, when he was here a little while ago, was pleased with the progress of his wound, and suggested lightening his dose of laudanum. _It’s still too soon to be certain that he’s safe from infection, but every day now is one in his favour._

Maybe one in his favour, maybe hopeful signs, but every whimper of his makes her heart ache.

* * *

 

_Erik is in a cell, caged behind bars, hands bound behind his back, clothes torn, lip split, eyes burning yellow, staring down, daring him to speak but the words all die in his throat. The marshal wrestles him out, pushes him and he half-stumbles, climbs the steps of the gallows. And he can’t watch, can’t bear to watch but he can’t tear his eyes away, must look at Erik, must pay him every last ounce of respect and acknowledgement. It would not be right, to let him die without one kind soul to bear witness to his eyes, and though it is more than kindness in his heart he cannot bear to give words to it, to make it real. And he watches something flicker in Erik’s face, a sudden dawning awareness, and his hands are free, are in front of him, and he buries one fist in the marshal’s face, and Erik grasps his pistol as he falls, shoots the hangman and runs, jumps onto a horse and flees, already a fading spot in the distance, away, away, away, and lost, lost from them all._

* * *

 

He’s drifting beneath the surface, the pain in his chest keeping him from sleep, when the knock comes to the door. He makes some little noise, he thinks, he must, because next thing Warren is shushing him, smoothing back his hair, and the bed shifts and he is gone. Henry is suddenly cold in his absence, and he shivers, draws the covers a little tighter around himself.

The soft hush of voices, Warren’s low baritone and—and Etta. Etta? Oh, yes. She is here, she came because of Fahim. Isn’t that it? It must be, the fractured shells of memory coming back to him. Fahim, shot. And Erik, come to see him. And Etta, come because she is Etta, and when something happens she likes to see things for herself, likes to gather the full story.

Likes to take matters into her own hands, if need be.

He opens his eyes, blinks to clear his vision, and turns his head towards the door. If Etta is here because of Fahim getting shot (and she is, she must be) then she’ll want to know the full story of that night, of the poker game. And his memory is dim, blotted out by what came after, of the intimacy with Warren and the knock on the door, of the blood staining his fingers as he fought to stop the bleeding. The poker game, in the face of all that, is beyond his grasp.

It takes all he can give it, but he musters a smile for her as she crosses the room. The effort of sustaining it is beyond him and it slips from his lips, but not before she gives him a faint smile in return as she settles in Warren’s chair. The shadows under her eyes are like she hasn’t slept in days, and a check of worry for her flickers in his heart.

“How do you feel?” she asks, taking the whiskey bottle from the nightstand and uncorking it.

“Like death.” _Perhaps only moderately this side of death_. His voice is too much of a rasp for such a sentence.

A grumble of “I’m not surprised” comes from Warren by the door, but Etta makes a noncommittal gesture and swigs from the bottle.

She coughs on the burn of it. “Tell me about the poker game.” The bed dips under Warren’s weight, and he takes Henry’s hand, squeezes it, but before he can speak, Etta goes on. “And tell me about this Erik.”

Henry’s heart stalls, and sweat beads on his forehead. Warren squeezes his hand again and looks at Etta, poker face fixed in place. “The outlaw?” His voice is steady, betrays nothing.

“Considering that’s the one I stumbled upon in his room in his room, yes. Him.”

* * *

 

They talked so long, sleep got the better of Henry again and he dozed off. Warren, too, has started to nod, talking with his eyes half-closed, and looking between the two of them, Etta almost feels remorse for dropping in on them and asking questions.

Almost.

There’s just enough of a twinge of remorse that she says to Warren, “Go up to my bed, get some sleep. You must be nearly as worn out as he is.” True, he’s not as pale as Henry, who’s so white his skin almost seems translucent, stretched taut over his face, but it would be difficult for anyone to be as pale as Henry.

“I can’t leave him.” Warren’s voice is soft, a vast contrast to the edge it had earlier, when she asked about Erik. ( _I don’t trust him_ , and his eyes were sharp, but Henry was gentle when he said, _I’m not sure if…I do either. But they love each other. They just—I’m not sure if…they realise it yet._ )

“You’re no good to him if you wear yourself out.” ( _The gambler was blond, had a cane and a limp. The shotgun rider was probably around your age or younger, hadn’t really grown into his height. Darker-haired. He’s probably on a run now._ )

“I’m not much help to him here.” His voice cracks and he looks away, away from her, away from Henry, at some point on the far wall. “I can’t leave him, Etta, I can’t.” His shoulders shake and he bows his head, and a wave of pure helplessness washes over Etta. She wishes she could do something, anything, to take the pain away, the fear, wishes she could help them somehow. But there’s nothing she can do, nothing she can say, nothing that she could even begin to think of that would make any difference to them, to either of them. And the pain aches inside of her, the desperation, tightening a ball in her chest so that it’s so hard to breathe, so hard and she swallows down the tears and takes Warren in her arms and holds him, just holds him, his head heavy on her shoulder, tears soaking into her shirt as her own slip into his hair, just holds him, as if it might ever begin to set the world to rights.


	12. Say You Won't Let Go

When, at last, Warren regains himself, she takes a glass and fills it with whiskey, presses it into his still shaking hand. He drinks it down without hesitation, and she re-fills it, watches as he sips. She would drink some of it herself, but she needs her wits about her now more than ever, with steady, careful Warren in a state of emotional disarray. He is the most held together man she’s ever known, and to see him now, cheeks raw and eyes red-rimmed and starry, cuts her right to the core.

She takes his hand and squeezes it, and gives him a smile she does not feel.

“He’ll be all right, you know,” and it is only when Warren’s lips twist that she realises she’s said the wrong thing.

“For now.” His voice is hoarser than she’s ever heard it, as hoarse as Henry’s after a coughing fit or when his throat is at him. “Until the next time, or the next time, or the next time. And on and on until—” He swallows, and whispers, “it’s always going to be like this. He’ll wear himself out, or suffer some setback, or his—or this _thing_ will catch up to him somehow. Or there’ll be a haemorrhage, or pneumonia. So many things, and someday they’ll wear him down enough that he won’t be able to fight them at all, and then—” Tears water in his eyes again. “He’ll improve, he’ll get better from _this,_ now, but he’ll never be well, never be able to say more than a couple of sentences without ending up breathless. He’s just going to get iller and iller, and this is as well as he’ll ever be again. And I just—I hate seeing him like this. But I can’t—I can’t _not_ be here either.” He stops, and drinks down another glass of whiskey, and falls silent.

For a long time they just sit there like that, her holding his hand, trying to get to grips with all he has said though she knows it is true, waiting for him start talking again, both listening to Henry’s breathing, the slight rattle of each inhale, the faint whistle of each exhale.

And he is right. It will only get worse from this.

All at once she has a new appreciation for Warren, for his determination to stick with Henry, for his love for him.

She does not think she could do it.

“I tried not to get close to him,” Warren murmurs eventually, “tried not to—not to fall in love with him but—but you know what he’s like.” And he smiles, ever so slightly, just for a moment. “I couldn’t help myself. And then he—and we—and I just—I’ve always known how it will end. Always known that unless there’s some sort of an accident then he’ll—but no matter how I try to get used to the notion, the thought of living in this world without him is more than I can take.”

He ignores the tears that trickle down his cheeks again, and she eases the glass from his hand lest he drop it. He would not talk like this if he were not so overwrought, so exhausted, she knows that. To hear him saying these things—God, but she would give the world if it were hers to give, to make things easier for them, to make it so they would never know anything but happiness with each other.

But there’s nothing she can do, nothing, only sit here and listen to the labour of Henry’s breaths, bear witness to Warren’s tears, and it’s maddening, it’s absolutely maddening, to see them suffer like this, to know that they wouldn’t be suffering anything like this at all right now if it were not for the man who shot Fahim.

And the longing burns ever deeper inside of her, to find the man who caused this, to make him pay.

Erik, at least, is with her in the cause.

But for now, she pushes the thoughts away, and pats Warren on the back of the hand. There will be time for all of that later. For now, she needs to settle him, and be certain he gets some sleep.

“I’ll ask Mrs Cummings to send you up some tea. And you’re going to drink it, and then you’re going to lie down there beside Henry and get some sleep, all right?” A compromise solution.

She watches him expectantly, and eventually he nods. “All right.”

* * *

 

A wave of cold pulls him to wakefulness, and he shivers, the light piercing through his closed eyelids. The pain lances sharp and he whimpers, tries to turn away but the light is still there. And then he is warm again, a barrier over him against the cold, but it is no help against the light, his head pounding in time with his heart.

“Sorry if I disturbed you, Deputy.” A voice, low, gentle in his ear. “I was just changing the sheets.” A woman’s voice, flash of blonde hair, blue eyes, brush of her fingers over his, once a month, cash from him to her. “Do you want some laudanum?”

Laudanum? No. Why—why would he want laudanum? The pain is just in his head and it’s a terrible habit to take laudanum for headaches. _That way lies dependence_ , Henry told him once, that set of his jaw that says he’s seen it happen. _Have some weak tea instead and lie down in a dark room_. A simple inexpensive solution.

“Tea,” and his throat grates with the single word, a cold hand pressed to his head.

“Tea? There’s a cold cup here that that _woman_ ,” hard edge of disdain, “left behind, if you want to try that.”

A nod is all he can manage, throat too sore for words, and then there is an arm slipping under his neck, propping him up, the tea cold on his lips. It tastes of lemon, of honey, and he swallows it, feels it ease his throat. He swallows it greedily, tries not to gag, then the moment passes and he is down again, the cup removed, hands fluttering at his shoulders, tucking.

“I’ll just pull the curtains, and leave you in peace. Try to get some sleep.”

She is as good as her word. The light dims, the pain in his head eases, and the soft snick of the door whispers that he is alone, but he does not hear it. Sleep has already carried him away.

* * *

 

Soft kisses pressed to his forehead, one to the corner of his lips and he smiles, turns into that kiss. “Go back to sleep,” Warren whispers, voice slightly gruff, and Henry sighs, eyes flickering open. Warren is soft, faintly blurry, and he leans into him, the warmth of his body coming through his clothes.

“Only if you join me.” His throat tears with the effort, but Warren smiles against him and makes it worth it.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you and Etta were in league.”

In spite of the pain rough in his chest, he chuckles, and Warren strokes back his hair. “We’d make…a great team.”

“A double act. She’d lure in the men and you’d woo them.”

“How do you think I caught you?”

Warren snorts and nuzzles into his hair. “I didn’t need those tactics.” The edge of sadness in his voice twists at Henry’s heart, but he will not let sadness touch them now, not this time. He will not let it come between them, will not let it disturb these moments of peace.

“I loved you too much to…let the moment slip by.” He would say the opportunity, but it’s too big of a word to try and say when he’s still breathless. “I still do.” _I always will._

A faint hitch in Warren’s breath, and his arms tighten their hold on him. “I thought I was dreaming when you asked me to kiss you. Or else that it was lack of sleep that made me imagine it.”

“I thought you might…think me de…lirious.”

“I almost thought you were.” He twines his fingers with Henry’s own, and kisses him again, and the lurking anguish dissipates, all right in their little world.

(As right as it can be, for now. But all will be well soon enough. He just needs some time.)

* * *

 

The most fruitful thing that came from her visit with Warren and Henry – other than vague descriptions of the gambler and shotgun rider, and before everything turned emotional (which she is resolutely _not_ thinking about now because it has no place taking up space in her brain when she needs to focus on finding who caused this, though she will buy a bottle of whiskey for Warren, which he will probably give to Henry ) – is the information that the poker game took place in the Arkady as opposed to the Enola. Why she assumed it was in the Enola is beyond her. Possibly because it’s the biggest saloon in town, but it was always the Arkady that saw the more _exciting_ poker games. It appears that fact continues to hold true, even now.

Not that there is any guarantee that the individuals she is after will be in the Arkady again tonight, but most players tend to frequent the same spots in her experience, unless they get wind of a high-stakes game somewhere else. And she has already checked. There are no high-stakes games tonight. The last one almost cost Fahim his life.

The gambler was blond and had a limp. She’s asked a few questions but has yet to turn up a name, only that he is known as the Colonel. Her inquiries about the shotgun rider, however, have proven more successful. Andrew Lyons.

And he is out of town.

A game of one step forward, two steps back. Her only hope is that the gambler might chance to come in here tonight. Otherwise, she’ll keep her ear to the ground and come in here tomorrow night, and the night after, and the night after, and every night until he does turn up. So she can size him up and pin him with questions. Unless Lyons, who’s on a stage run, comes back into town in the meantime and satisfies her curiosity.

She’s already sized up the poker games in here tonight, and there are none of much interest. She could buck the tiger playing faro, but that’s only a fool’s errand. The odds all lie with the house, and the only real money to be made is on the other side of the table, dealing.

To think of Warren dealing. It’s almost laughable to picture him, but needs must, she supposes.

He’s probably lost that job thanks to his absences lately, his unreliability with Henry needing him. And despite her best efforts, sadness twinges inside of her again, and she sips her glass of whiskey to try and numb it. But the fact remains, if Henry doesn’t improve soon, they could easily end up short of money.

Hopefully Warren has a good stake built up. Hopefully.

Fahim, at least, cannot be too badly off, considering the existence of that three thousand. And considering how frugal he can be at the best of times, he likely has a nice bit more. _The god of pa’simony_ , Henry called him one night, when he was rambling half-gone on laudanum for his chest pain and not inclined to pronounce his ‘r’s. And of course, Fahim has Erik now, who by all accounts is not too badly off.

Erik. The silent partner in her mission.

“I believe you were looking for me, sir.” The voice is soft, slightly flat in that north-eastern way, and Etta looks up from contemplating her glass of whiskey. She finds a man standing across the table from her, tall, blond, faintly crinkled features, leaning heavily on a cane.

Blond. A cane.

His gaze meets hers, lips twitching ever so slightly as he takes off his hat. “Ma’am.” His bearing is military, his face faintly familiar, and she stands, gestures for him to sit. He inclines his head and acquiesces, stretching out his left leg as he sinks into the chair. She settles back into her own seat, tilts the bottle of whiskey towards him in a silent question, and he nods, plucks a silver cup from his pocket.

“To whom do I owe the pleasure?” His politeness is almost grating, and it is natural for her to fall back on being cryptic.

She purses her lips. “You may call me Etta. And who, may I ask, are you?”

He smiles, stretches his hand across the table. “Philippe De Chagny. Bust most,” and his grip is surprisingly strong, “just call me the Colonel.”


	13. Sketches

Etta has shared beds with many military men. It is a fact of which she is vainly proud, though she will never bring herself to admit that to anyone. She is only slightly more likely to admit that none of them, not a single one, are as talented at pleasuring a woman as ex-Colonel Philippe De Chagny.

This she learns on the third night of their acquaintance, mere hours after laughing off any possibility of intimacy with the man when Henry had insisted on probing the matter, his lips twisting knowingly. How he had his suspicions before the thought ever crossed her mind is something she will never understand.

De Chagny’s hand is strong curled around her hip now, his tongue soft against hers, and then his long fingers are slipping between her legs, and she moans into his mouth, all memory of anything she did or did not talk about with Henry forgotten.

While Etta has been with both men and women and many of each and occasionally at the same time, ex-Colonel Philippe De Chagny, for his part, late of the cavalry due to the wound inflicted by a deserter that left him for dead, has been with _many_ women. In the pantheon of their glory there have been several whom he knows would kill him, if they considered it necessary. The infamous and delectable Sorelli of Dodge is but one, a woman with enviable knife-throwing skills. Etta-of-surname-unshared is another, and this he sensed the moment he reached across the table in the Arkady saloon and shook her hand.

So to have her moaning into his mouth is a pleasure indeed.

He is aware of her connection to the unfortunate Deputy Iravani, a man with an enviable pokerface, and he has shared his own version of the events that happened that night. It is natural that she be suspicious of him. All matters considered, he would be suspicious of himself, if he had not been sharing a drink with Marshal Comerford when the shot cracked out in the street. But the Marshal will vouch for him, and in Etta’s hands he senses his life is safe. At least for now.

Marshal Comerford, meanwhile, is aware of, well, what may not necessarily be a burgeoning _relationship_ between the ex-Colonel who bought him a glass of whiskey but who himself drank coffee, and the girl-man Etta, newly arrived in town, but is certainly something. What either of them could see in the other is beyond his grasp, but he is short a set of hands thanks to Iravani getting shot, and it has never been easy keeping the peace at night, so he does not trouble his mind with it. Or with much else, for that matter. Though he is pleased with the latest report from Doc Morris on the health of his Deputy.

The fact that one Andrew Lyons, the shotgun rider whom he has heard a rumour was involved in the poker game that night, is found strangled the night he arrives back in town is not lost on him. And nor is the fact that the strangling was done with an exceedingly thin piece of rope, “something like catgut, I suspect”, Morris declared. “There was no struggle because otherwise his hands would bear marks. And this,” and he tapped a bloody patch on the side of the body’s head, “was done ante-mortem. He was unconscious when he was killed.” The whole scene almost looked like a botched decapitation, and Comerford found himself grateful that he had not eaten in several hours.

Fahim, now, by the third night of Etta and the Colonel’s acquaintance, has had his laudanum reduced to only a third of what it was. He still sleeps most of the time, but when he is awake finds he can keep his thoughts reasonably well in order, so long as he does not move at all and thereby inflict pain on himself, and there are three key thoughts which keep him occupied — why is Etta here, where is Erik, and what has Henry done to himself this time? The question of what happened to _himself_ is one he occasionally tries to form, but the pain tends to make itself known then and he pushes the whole endeavor of thinking away.

And sometimes it is as if Erik is here, as if Erik has just left him. And he can feel the brush of lips against his forehead, the soft smoothing of his thumb over the back of his hand, can hear his voice murmuring soft in his ear. But he is alone when his eyes flicker open, each sensation only dreamed, and the peace that dwells within him is webbed through with longing.

Mostly he is too tired, and too full of the broths and thin stews that Mrs Cummings forces on him, to do much in the way of thinking or feeling or dreaming at all.

Mrs Cummings cannot help being vaguely troubled by the back entrance to the boarding house. It leads right on to the second floor and almost nobody uses it, preferring to come in by the front door and use the stairs that are slightly less steep. Why the building even has a back entrance she has no idea. It was simply like that when she bought it and she has just never gotten around to boarding it up. She is _aware_ that some of the men use it, if they want to sneak in a woman for the night. And, considering her own history, no matter how she disapproves of such goings on she cannot object. But the door has been more frequently disturbed this last week. And the latch has been broken on it. In fact, there have been _odd_ goings on ever since the Deputy was shot. Hushed voices, creaking bootsteps. She has learned the cadence of all her long-time boarders, but this is something else, something different.

Hardly does anxiety flutter deep in her chest than she pushes it away. Likely it is because of _that woman_ , this _Etta_ who takes her breakfast with Mr Stapp, then goes and sits for hours with the Deputy. The woman is beautiful in her own _odd_ way, Mrs Cummings will grant, but there is something about her that sets her skin prickling.

Henry continues to improve, day by day. Warren has paid Ah Sing extra to draw hot water to the boarding house, and he has made it to Mrs Cummings’ battered tin bath twice. Each time has left him feeling like a new man, if an exhausted one, and no, he did _not_ lean on Warren’s arm as he returned to their room, he merely let him think that he did. There is a difference.

The first time he promptly fell asleep when he reached the bed, though his hair was still damp. He dozed awake enough to feel Warren towelling it dry. “Don’t want you to catch cold,” the murmur came, “go back to sleep.” And it was no great trouble to obey.

The second time he settled himself in the chair upon his return, and determined to — finally — read the letter from that brother of his. This proved to be an inadequate strategy for staving off sleep, because Charles writes almost as boring as he lives, with digressions and ponderings that are more than Henry has the energy to take in. He skims most of the letter, he will confess, finds that Charles is well (fair) as are his wife and children (good), that he is pleased Henry has been diverting himself with “meaningful occupation” (Henry made the point of including his time with the posse to apprehend Erik when he last wrote his brother, though he neglected to include the incident where he was thrown. He suspects the reference to meaningful occupation is more related to his having some steady doctoring work in Morris’ absence, than the brief adventure with Fahim), and, as per usual and every single letter for the last four years, Charles finishes by admonishing his brother to be careful.

So. Nothing truly new after all.

Henry throws the letter aside and resolves to answer it some other time. Warren is stretched on the bed, giving the pretense of reading the week-old newspaper, and Henry feels strong enough for one meaningful occupation which he _knows_ Charles would never approve of.

Perhaps that is why he suddenly feels the longing for it, deep in his gut.

He will take care of Warren, and Warren will take care of him, and will know that he is well and no longer needs to be confined to his room. And they will sleep the sated sleep of the damned.

He smiles to himself, stands and stretches, pain briefly lancing through his chest. A vast improvement indeed, he considers as he catches his breath, and then he leans across the bed and presses a kiss lightly to Warren’s cheek.

“Perhaps,” he murmurs, “there is something that may divert both of our attentions…better than the paper.”

Warren glances at him sideways, and in that glance are all the questions he might consider asking, but he smiles and sets the paper down.

“If you’re certain you’re up for it.”

And Henry lies down, Warren rolling into his arm beside him, and presses himself as close to this man, this Adonis, as he can. “Certain as I’ll ever be.”

And in those simple words lie the promise of a night of _most_ diverting entertainment indeed.


	14. Back in the Saddle Again

De Chagny is still asleep as Etta combs back her hair and pins it up under her hat. The man is an excellent ride, she’ll give him that, but like any man she has ever come across he needs an astounding amount of sleep after a session, and their early morning go has drained him. For her part, she is a little sore after his vigour but she has been in far worse condition, so she must not complain. And so it is with a kiss pressed lightly to his lips that she departs, in all her glory in her finest suit that she wore for the wooing of him, thoroughly satisfied in the relations with _men_ department.

And longing, slightly, for relations with women. But the longing is on a low enough simmer that she can put it off until later.

The heat is not up yet, and a slight mist lingers in the distance. She tilts her hat to shield her eyes, and so that the stares she is garnering will not meet her face. It is not her first time making a walk such as this, though it is her first time in this town this time around. Let them all think what they will. They could never begin to understand anyway.

And if she swaggers a little more than usual, well, what does it matter?

She is almost back to the boardinghouse when she (quite literally) bangs into Warren. He beams at her as they disentangle themselves, looking sunnier than she’s seen him since she arrived in town, though there are shadows under his eyes.

“Where are you off to?” she asks, brushing dust from her suit.

“The baths. I was _instructed_ to go and cleanse myself.” The phrase is a thoroughly Henry one, and she cocks an eyebrow.

“And what about himself?”

“I believe he’s shaving. Go on up. He’ll be happy to see you.” And then he claps her on the shoulder and walks away.

She shrugs to herself and carries on.

Fahim is sleeping when she checks in on him, though his eyelids half-flicker. A slight breeze drifts through the open window, but he is well wrapped up and it is unlikely to make him cold so she decides to leave it as it is. The air will be good for him. And later, if he is cold, she will close it then.

Mrs Cummings eyes her as they meet in the hall, but does not speak and her lips are pursed. Etta gives her her best smile, just to brighten her day of course, not intended to annoy her, not at all, and knocks softly on Henry’s door.

“Come in.” His voice is hoarse but cheerful, and the door creaks as she opens it. Something really needs to be done about that hinge.

Henry turns from the mirror to face her, wearing only a pair of trousers, suspenders hanging loose. His face is lathered with cream, and it is as if he is wearing a ridiculous white beard as he smiles at her. “You look like you had an exciting night.”

Etta cannot help herself. She looks down at her clothes to see what gave her away and finds not one article in disarray. When she looks back to Henry he taps his neck.

“Bruise.”

 _Damn_ that De Chagny to the farthest reaches of hell.

“I do hate when men do that.” It’s as if they think they are branding cattle.

His smile turns to a smirk. “In that case, best that you not see Warren unclothed for some time.”

“I have no desire to see him unclothed at all.”

Henry makes a noise in his throat that might almost be a chuckle, and turns back to the mirror. “Better that way.” He resumes his shaving and she settles on the edge of the bed, picking up a newspaper off the nightstand. She reads one headline and has the distinct impression that she’s seen this paper before. It would be a mercy to burn it as kindling.

Instead of reading, she directs her attention back to Henry. And in the reflection of the mirror, she tries not to see how prominent his ribs have become. If she ever doubted that he’s lost weight in the few months since she saw him in Austin, she has the confirmation of it now. She could count every rib if she wished to, and while she has often found the jut of a man’s hipbone appealing, the sight of Henry’s makes her stomach churn.

As long as she has cared for him, Etta has made a habit of studying him before they part. She never knows when, or if, they will meet again or what condition he will be in. She has known him longer than Warren, longer, even, than Fahim. Neither of them remember him when he still had some flesh in his face, before his cheeks became so hollow, his nose so sharp. There is not a spare ounce of fat to be found anywhere on him.

No wonder Warren has worked himself into such a state.

She bites her tongue to clamp down on the sudden urge to ask, _how long?_ How much longer might he have? They do not talk about it. She has seen him ill more times than she cares to remember, but still they do not talk about it. And most of the time she is able to forget how sick he is, able to forget that though he is only five years older than her, he is likely to be long dead by the time she reaches the age he is now.

He may not even survive two years to see thirty.

Cold sweat breaks out on her skin and she balls her hands into fists to keep them from trembling. She must not let him see her thoughts, must keep herself under control. It would only upset him to know how upset she is over him, over what’s happening to him. She will not have him worry for her. He has more than enough to think about already.

She swallows and in the mirror’s reflection as he tilts his head to scrape the cream from his jaw, she searches for the scar that runs along his ribs. It is faded now, half-lost in the hollowed landscape of him, but Etta picks it out, focuses in on it, and feels her own scars crying out in sympathy. It, and hers, are the relics of a fight that she pulled him out of up in Deadwood. He was jumped by two buffalo hunters, and swore afterwards to her that he was holding his own until his cough struck. She heard the scuffle and found him on his knees gagging and bruised, and though they were both three times bigger than her and she was barely twenty-one, she smashed one of them in the face with the butt of his own pistol. The other one had a knife and got her with it several times but she bit him and kicked him until he dropped it, and both of them turned tail and ran.

It was only afterwards, after kneeling in the dirt supporting Henry as he caught his breath, after he breathlessly thanked her because this was still early in their acquaintance, after he took her back to his room and cleaned and stitched her wounds, that they realized he, too, was bleeding. And she cleaned the gash along his ribs under his hissed instructions, and balanced the light and the mirror as he stitched it. Then he insisted that he would not feel right letting her walk back through the streets to her own room over a saloon, and promising that he had no untoward intentions (though she already knew he had no interest in the charms of women, and it was one of the reasons she came to his rescue) he asked her to stay with him for the night. They split a small bottle of laudanum and crawled into bed together, and sometime in the night they ended up in each other’s arms, just holding on like a pair of children seeking safety from the darkness.

Henry is the closest thing to a brother she has ever known. And no true blooded brother could ever have been as good to her as Henry has.

“What are you thinking about?” His voice is soft, and with a startle she comes back to herself and sees that he has finished shaving. He is regarding her with concern, holding a towel with the remnants of the cream on it.

“Oh, just Deadwood, is all.” And, so he cannot begin to tread anywhere near her earlier, more unsettling thoughts, she flashes him a smile. “You look a lot better.”

He nods, tossing aside the towel and reaching for a pastel shirt draped over the back of a chair. “I feel it. And, suffice it to say, I proved it to Warren last night.” A spark twinkles in his eye, and that is all she needs to know about why Warren was in such a good mood when she met him. Henry goes on, “Today, we’ve decided, I’m going to visit Fahim and see how he is. Tomorrow, if I can manage it, and I will, we will go out for lunch. And the night after, hopefully, and Fahim’s condition permitting, I will be back at the card tables and this whole sorry episode will be behind us.” His voice is rough by the end of it, and he finishes buttoning his shirt, tucks it in and snaps his suspenders into place before sipping from the glass of whiskey on the vanity. He reaches for the bottle, tops up his glass and pours her one that he presses into her hand before he folds himself into the chair and grins at her. “Now tell me all about your night with the cavalry officer.”

* * *

 

The days trip by, heat and humidity turning them gelatinous. The discomfort of it leaves Fahim irritable and sore. He wakes several times to the sight of Henry playing solitaire beside him, and feels like it’s some sort of hallucination. On one occasion it was Etta he found, whittling on a piece of wood. She grinned at him and her eyes shone and for one dreadful moment he feared she was some sort of demon, then her features coalesced and his heart eased. She squeezed his fingers and fixed the blanket around him, and wiped his face with a damp cloth. And several times he caught the glimpse of golden eyes, and a twisted lip, and felt kisses pressed softly to his forehead.

Etta liaises with a saloon girl whose name she forgets within ten minutes, but names have no importance for their activities. Afterwards she takes the Colonel back into her arms, and when he smiles at her, her heart flutters in a way that’s so unfamiliar she almost asks Henry to check her out. But what troubles her more is that she has already exonerated De Chagny in the matter of shooting Fahim. There are too many people who saw him with the Marshal at the time the shot was fired, and now that the shotgun rider Lyons has been found murdered (and she thought Erik might have done a tidier job of it than he did) she has no leads, and no idea where to start to get any.

The clock ticks, and the world turns, and another cartridge is slotted in a chamber.

* * *

 

It is coming up to midnight, and they are playing poker. This is Henry’s first night in a saloon, his strength up enough and Fahim settled enough, and the big money is in the Alhambra. Still, he is losing more than he wins, fatigue heavy in his bones. It would be worse if he were losing to anyone other than Warren, but Warren is on a roll and has already taken a thousand dollars and a fancy gold watch, and left several drovers and Buquet the useless piano player in a state of moodiness. Buquet has cashed out and left, presumably back to the Enola, and Etta is relieved that he is playing in there tonight. She does not think she could bear the assault on her ears.

The drovers have changed their faces, been replaced by more, and she has not bothered to keep up with their names. Warren is on course to take a second thousand dollars, and she’s got nothing but black aces and half a straight. It’s damned miserable.

She draws a cigar that she won off Henry and lights it, feels the first puff seeping through her lungs. In the back corner Phili—De Chagny is talking to his younger brother, a Lieutenant down from the fort with the same curling blond locks, only lacking the limp and the scattering of grey hairs. If it wasn’t for the Colonel being obviously so much older, they might almost pass for twins. And it did, briefly, cross her mind to wonder if she might have been double-crossed with them in her investigations, but after the shot that got Fahim, Philippe was seen by several witnesses hobbling after the Marshal, and Raoul was observed emerged from Betty Floyd’s brothel in a state of half-undress. And thus both De Chagnys are innocent.

She combs a hand through her hair, and though it is only shoulder-length, wishes it were shorter.

The hand goes to Warren with a royal flush, however he did it the bastard, and Henry shakes his head, smiling to himself.

“I think I’ll call it a night,” he says, and pushes back from the table. “These lungs aren’t up to such excitement.”

Warren worries his lip. “Do you want me to go back with you?” And Etta knows it translates to, _are you sure you’ll manage the walk and the stairs?_

“No point you going when you’re on a streak,” she says, setting down her cards. “I’ll go with him.”

But Henry shakes his head. “Stay, both of you. Enjoy your night. I want to take in the stars.” In other words, _I’ll be careful and take my time, and I am tired of being nannied_. “I’ll look in on Fahim.”

He stands slowly, and when he doesn’t lose his colour, Warren nods. “All right.” And Henry nods at them all, and winks at her, before he departs, walking with great measure.

The game resumes, a drover dealing. Warren consults his cards with an expression of exaggerated care, as if his thoughts have not flown with Henry, and Etta has to stifle a chuckle, taking up her own cards. An excellent poker player he may be, but sometimes Warren can be damned obvious in his feelings. How it took he and Henry so long to get together she will never know.

She studies her cards. Three queens and an ace. If she could replace the ace with the other red queen and hold a still face, she might get to take some of that thousand back off Warren. This might be a good time to get a dress tailored, something in soft green maybe. Just to excite De Chagny a bit…

The muffled echo of a shot makes her jump, and she sharply inhales, forgetting about her cigar, half-choking on the smoke, and beside her Warren stiffens, suddenly pale, and time stops as the cards fall from his hand.

 


	15. Sigh No More

He is not certain when he got in the habit of stopping to stargaze while catching his breath. Possibly in Deadwood, probably before, perhaps, even, back in Richmond, when he still thought he was suffering from a particularly prolonged spell of bronchitis. He had an explanation for everything. The cough and chest pain were bronchitis, the weight loss was overwork compounded by his nightlife, such as it was, the night sweats were the humidity. He had a reason for everything, and now more than four years on, he can only marvel at his own stupidity.

To think he had studied all the textbooks, had attended several cases in clinical practice and in university, and it was only when Charles and Louisa prevailed upon him, actually insisted, that he visit a doctor himself (and he only went for the sake of humouring his brother and sister-in-law) that the truth became known.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter when he took up stargazing. What matters is that he stops, now, feeling breathless and without thinking about it. And just as he considers that the stars are shining particularly brightly, he hears the soft click from the shadows.

It is instinctive to throw himself down, and hot pain streaks across his shoulder, a crack shattering the night. His lungs constrict painfully, heart falters, iron and salt boiling heavy in the back of his throat and he gasps, gags, tastes dust, and then the cough comes, sharp and tearing, something jarred loose inside of him. The dust, the dark, the stars, all shrink to the pain in his chest, the burning, the tears stinging in his eyes and he tries to push himself up but he can’t get his breath and he sinks back down, a little voice in his mind whispering to turn his head to his side.

The cough keeps coming, shaking him, the blood, and then there are hands, fumbling at him, a jumble of words that he can’t make out, and he gasps a breath that rattles, the pain shooting through him again.

He’s on his back. Why is he on his back he was on his front? There’s a cloth pressed to his lips, an arm under his neck, and he hacks out more blood, a soft voice shushing him.

Murmured words break through the buzzing in his ears.

“…wounded?”

“…nicked shoulder…doctor?”

A doctor? No he doesn’t need a doctor. Why would he need a doctor? It’s just the adhesions tearing. He hit the ground too hard. He’ll be fine in a little while if he just—if he rests.

Warren’s face blots out the stars, pale and creased in the shadows, and Henry gropes for his fingers, brushes against them and squeezes, clinging on. “No…doctor,” he croaks, “just ad—hesions.” Too much of a word and it sends him coughing, and for a moment the darkness spreads, and he loses the stars, loses Warren, and then he is lying on his side, the air cold on his neck, his cravat loosened. He still tastes the blood, but the urge to cough has gone and he dare not tempt it by speaking. If he just breathes, just breathes and rests and lies here a little while, he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.

* * *

 

Time has never passed so slowly as it does in those minutes before Henry rouses. His eyes are half-open, his fingers limp in the dust, and Warren leans over him, whispering in his ear.

It is more than Etta can bear to look at, and when a hand comes to rest on her shoulder, she looks up, and meets the concerned gaze of Philippe De Chagny.

“Will he be all right?” his voice is soft as he nods towards Henry, and all at once Warren’s words from before come back to her, _for now_ … _this time_. This time. It’s only ever this time he’ll be all right. And what about the next time? And the next?

Tears spring to her eyes and she fights them back, wills them not to spill. Philippe’s hand curls around hers, and she grips it tight. He grunts as she pulls herself to her feet.

“He just needs to rest a few minutes.” As if a few minutes might ever begin to cure what’s wrong with him.

But Philippe nods, and does not press her, and suddenly she realizes that the crowd of onlookers is gone. She begins to ask where is everyone, when Philippe squeezes her hand. “Raoul and the Marshal dispersed them. I believe they may be trying to figure out who fired the shot.”

Who fired the shot?

Who fired?

She cannot begin to explain it, but knowledge is sudden and powerful. Whoever fired at Henry is the same person who shot Fahim. The conviction courses through her, burning in her chest. Someone knows. Someone tried to blend in with that crowd. Someone who wants her friends dead, who might want her dead. Who’s next? Her? Warren? Philippe? Is he implicated now by association, a target suddenly appeared on his chest? Who’ll be next to have a bullet fired at them?

No one, if she can help it. No one else after tonight. So help her God she is going to find them.

* * *

 

Despite Henry’s faint protestations, Warren sends Philippe to get Doc Morris. “Have him meet us at Mrs Cummings’. Etta and I will—will get Henry there.”

Henry swoons when they get him to his feet, but Warren holds him up and Etta searches his coat for his silver flask of whiskey. The very taste of it steadies him, and with one arm around Warren’s shoulders and the other around Etta’s (though it pulls on his wounded arm and sends pain shooting through deep to the bone), they balance him for the journey home.

It is slow work, with frequent stops for Henry to catch his breath. A coughing fit grips him five minutes from the boardinghouse, and he brings up a little blood, almost blacking out, but Warren’s arm is firm around his waist, and Etta unbuttons his collar to help him get air. Sweat trickles down his face with the effort and Etta dabs it away, holding his flask to his lips so he can sip more whiskey.

It is in this state of dishevellment, dirty, torn, and blood-stained, that Mrs Cummings (in her nightdress and gown, hair pinned up and face pale) finds them when she opens the door. Her hand immediately goes to her mouth, and then she steps back and swallows. “The Colonel, the Doctor and the Marshal are all waiting in the kitchen. I have some hot water ready.” And distantly, Etta thinks that it almost sounds like the beginning of one of Eddie Foy’s jokes. _A colonel, a doctor, and a marshal all walked into a boardinghouse…_ It hitches oddly in her brain.

Warren nods stiffly, and between them they get Henry, who has begun to sag again, into the kitchen and settled into a chair.

Doc Morris’ face is grim, and stern, as he eases off Henry’s coat, and the questions start coming from Comerford. “What happened? Did you see anything? Do you have any idea why?” And Henry is too breathless to answer, in too much pain from his chest and his arm, and Warren is pale and trembling slightly under the light.

Morris’ voice comes sharp. “Out everybody out. I need quiet to work.”

But when Warren, too, makes to leave, Henry grasps his had weakly. “Stay,” he whispers, and Warren shoots a helpless look at Morris, who sighs and nods.

Out of the kitchen, the small hallway is crammed with four people in it. Comerford is frowning, obviously less than pleased at being shut out, but then he shakes his head and tips his hat to Mrs Cummings before directing his attention back to Philippe. “I’ll stop by in the morning and see if he remembers anything.” Philippe doesn’t reply, only glances at Etta who is fighting the urge to deck the Marshal.

When no one answers, the Marshal shrugs and leaves.

“I suppose I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.” Philippe’s voice is soft, makes the words half-question, half-statement, as if he is unsure whether or not Etta will have him tomorrow. But Etta nods at him.

“Probably late in the day.”

He leans in as if to kiss her, but then seems to think better of it and squeezes her hand. And nodding once at Mrs Cummings, he hobbles out.

And then it is just Etta and the landlady left in the hall. Mrs Cummings settles herself on the stairs, half leaning against the wall, but Etta is too full of anxiety to sit, too unsettled to try to eavesdrop. The walls feel as if they are closing in on her, and she would give anything to be away, anything to be outside, to be anywhere other than here. But she owes it to Henry to stay. Owes it to him.

And before she realizes it, she finds herself pacing.

* * *

 

How much time passes before the door opens, Etta will never know. Mrs Cummings has departed upstairs, and she has considered following her, stopping with Fahim and faking that all is well if he is awake. But she does not trust herself to be able to maintain such a façade when the voices in the kitchen are hushed. Instead she wracks her brain, tries to piece together every move of the night, before the shot was fired, to decipher who it may be.

Hardly someone from the poker game. Henry was losing consistently all night, his mind clearly not wholly on the cards. If it was the game, then surely someone would have shot Warren instead (heaven forfend and God forgive her for the thought). And it is too much of a coincidence, that his first night back on the town is the night someone chooses to shoot at him. He has not been out since the night Fahim was shot. And Warren has only ventured out a couple of times. The two shootings must be linked. They have to be.

So who could it be?

Not Lyons, clearly. Erik has seen to that.

But it is someone.

Buquet left the game early, but Buquet has a standing arrangement to play at the Enola. Odds are he wasn’t even _in_ the Arkady the night Fahim was shot.

Certainly not the Marshal anyway. Or Mrs Cummings, who was rousted from her bed the night Fahim was shot, and clearly suffered the same fate again tonight. But Etta never really considered her a possibility anyway.

No possibility of a disgruntled lover, at least not in Henry’s case and doubtful in Fahim’s.

Someone Fahim arrested sometime? But why would they come after Henry? She’s never known Henry to go out of his way to assist the law, and yes, he joined the small posse to catch Erik, but that was mostly for Fahim’s sake.

None of it is adding up.

The door creaks faintly as it opens, and Warren closes it behind him, pale and drawn.

Etta stops in her pacing, her heart clenching tight.

“There’s no haemorrhage.” And Warren’s words are hoarse, but the wave of relief that washes through Etta makes her lean against the wall for support. His voice shakes just slightly as he goes on, and she longs to reach out, to take his hand, but touching him now might make him crumble and she bites the inside of her lip to fight the urge.  “I was afraid there might be but—but it was just the torn adhesions like he—like he thought. And maybe some small blood vessels. But he’s going to be all right. Doc’s going to give him a little laudanum for the pain.”

Etta nods, fingers twisting at her watch chain as she tries not to think that she has never heard Warren so hesitant in his words as he is tonight. It’s understandable. Too understandable.

But the blood was not just coming from Henry’s lungs. And she braces herself to ask. “And his arm?”

“Flesh wound. The bullet just sliced him, thank God. It’s all stitched up now.” Warren swallows, and drinks from Henry’s flask. A beat passes, two, and his voice is infinitely stronger, his eyes shadowed when he says, “I’m going to find whoever did this, Etta. I’m going to find them, and they’ll wish they never even thought of it.”

The set of his jaw is enough to send a chill through her own heart.


	16. No Light, No Light

Henry sleeps most of that first day. The laudanum and the coughing combined leave him too tired to wake for long, just long enough to sip some cold tea and squeeze Warren’s fingers, as if he might say, _thank you for being here, thank you for loving me, don’t worry this is far from being the end_. And Warren knows these are the things he means and smiles back at him, kisses his fingers, his forehead, but all the time he’s thinking, _it could have been the end, if you had not thrown yourself down in time, if he had been a better shot. You would have been dead out there in the street, and I might not have reached you. Someone tried to cut what time we have short, and I am not going to stand for it but I need you to be all right first._ These things he naturally keeps to himself, but each time the blanket slips and he sees the dressing around Henry’s shoulder, his jaw clenches.

Mostly he tries not to worry that Henry is sleeping too much, and Etta, when she stops in, reminds him that it is good for Henry to sleep, that he needs sleep to heal, and when in the evening Doc Morris checks on his patient (he has checked on Fahim too, and is particularly pleased with his progress) he is satisfied with what he finds.

Still. Warren has learned to live with worry. It is a natural part of loving Henry.

As is Henry, cracking open one eye and swallowing, and whispering, “Come to bed you worrying fool…and hold me,” which he does shortly after the doctor leaves, and Warren acquiesces, as he always does because there are few things he loves more than holding Henry, and slips in beneath the blanket, and takes him in his arms. Henry makes a soft little noise in the back of his throat as he nuzzles into Warren’s chest, and in spite of everything, in spite of the worry, in spite of the fear, in spite of the anger, he cannot help but smile.

The smile is dashed from his lips only a little while later, and his heart stalls when Henry whispers, “When the end does come, I want it to be like this. You and I and…propriety bedamned.” And tears prickle Warren’s eyes, and he is on the point of telling Henry not to talk like that, when Henry goes on, “I think it will be easier, if I can feel you beside me.”

Shortly after that, he slips into sleep, and Warren can only lie awake, and hold him, and stare into the gathering shadows in the street, trying not to let those words circle in his brain.

* * *

 

Those nights with Erik were a dream. Surely they must have been. The light tracing of fingertips on his skin, that voice murmuring in his ear, the ridge of a scar beneath his lips. He reaches for it through the darkness, the memories, but they slip through his fingers like tiny grains of sand.

How could it have been real? Any of it?

He swallows, tries to conjure the shape of those eyes. The colour has come to him so many times, that golden hue in hazel, but the shape is—is more difficult. Were they round? Slightly slanted? Narrow or almond? And the scar tearing, twisting his upper lip. Was it to the right? Or to the left?

The skin stretched taut like a death’s head, pockmarked and ravaged. The sunken nose. Any of it could have come from the stories about him, from posters, a glimpse in a saloon. How can he know he really saw him? Really lay beside him beneath the stars? It is all so very far away, as intangible as air, as whispers.

The doctor said that he has been shot. He never said anything about Erik. But being shot explains the pain beneath his ribs, that lances through him every time he moves.

And Henry is ill again. He knew there was something, when he heard the commotion through the night, the hacking cough. But the doctor’s eyes were shadowed. And Etta, when she came to him, was pale, her lip bitten raw, her smile forced.

It must be serious this time.

The fear edges his wondering, follows him. Henry, ill. Bleeding. Possibly dying. And Erik, not real. Or, real but never his. Sweet nights imagined, a fever dream from his wound.

And longing fills him. Longing to go to Henry, to take his hand. Longing to swear to Warren that it will not end like this even if that may be a lie. Longing to—to find Erik. To see for himself. Just to know. The shape of his eyes, the precise angle of the scar on his lip. A whole endless world of longing.

But he is helpless. Helpless and cannot move, not with the pain, not with the room swimming around him when he raises his head. And for all of the longing pounding through his chest, he can only lie here, and let the tears trickle from his eyes.

* * *

 

_The blood bubbles from between Henry’s lips as he gasps, fingers twitching in the dust. She can’t bear to watch, to see the blood welling up through Fahim’s fingers pressed tight to his chest, the tears trickling from Henry’s eyes, shining in Warren’s, to hear Warren’s desperate murmurs, to see him stretched in the dirt beside Henry, cradling his face with both hands, but she can’t look away, rooted to the spot, eyes riveted on Henry’s grey face, his blue eyes flickering, blue as the sky. Fahim presses down heavier on the bullet hole, and Henry gags, the blood rising, rising, spilling a crimson tide from his mouth, dribbling from his nose, and his legs shift, Warren kissing his cheeks, his forehead, smoothing his hair, smearing blood. He sucks in another gasp of air, gurgling in his throat, his eyes widening, neck arching._

_A faint flicker of eyelids, half-closing. A soft sigh, and silence. Silence bar the rushing in her ears, bar Warren’s whispered sobs, and her eyes catch Fahim’s convulsive swallow. He moves, presses two fingers to Henry’s wrist, to his throat._

_His breath hitches as he leans back on his heels._

_A single tear shines golden on his cheek._

_The blood dribbles from Henry’s chest, his eyes blank, staring up at the sky, dust caked into the blood on his face, lips barely parted. And Warren’s wail pierces her through to her heart, eyes fixed, still fixed, on the blood-stained fingerprints on Henry’s throat._

Etta wakes sweating, her heart pounding, and sits bolt upright, the room turning around her, bile rising in her throat. She blinks, and Henry’s eyes are hollow before her, shivers and it’s the blood running over the backs of Fahim’s fingers, swallows and it’s Warren’s face contorted, blood staining his cheek where he ran his hand and it’s all she can do not to be sick, to hold her breath and fumble out of bed to the window.

The night air is cold on her face, and she shivers again, sweat chilling her skin, still half-caught in the nightmare. A nightmare. Just a nightmare. Not real. Not happening.

Henry is alive. She knows he is alive. She helped Warren help him back after the bullet winged him a whole day ago, longer. And Fahim is laid up, could not have kept pressure on the wound. And it was night, not full daylight.

_Not real not real not real._

The walls are pressing in on her, the attic room suddenly too small, too narrow, and she needs to get out of here, _needs to run, to run, they’re coming for her, they’re coming for Henry, she needs to find him, needs to save him, needs to run_.

The light flicks on, drowning out the street, gas humming low, and she turns, heart pounding. _Light, light, who flicked the light,_ and Philippe is looking at her, face creased, his arms wrapping around her holding her close, and she’s safe, she’s safe, fingers gripping his shirt, pulling him closer, knotting the fabric, and she gasps, swallows, sucks in a full breath, her heart slowing.

And Henry is all right. Henry is safe. Philippe smooths her hair, his voice soft in her ear but she doesn’t hear the words, only the simple thought that _Henry is safe, he’s alive, he’s alive_ , and she clings onto it with all of her life.

* * *

 

Warren would be cross with him if he knew he is out of bed, but Warren is soundly asleep (thank God) and if Henry had to lie down for another minute he might _crack_. So he rolled out of bed, hissing when his arm protested, and finding a match, struck it and lit the candle on the table. Then he settled in the chair, draped his coat around his shoulders against the chill, and laid out a game of solitaire.

And it is either that Warren’s soft snores are too distracting, or else the pain aching in his chest (though mercifully he is not coughing) or else there are only fifty-one cards in the deck, but he cannot seem to win the game. He is banking on it being the former reason, prays it isn’t the latter, and suspects it may be the middle. Whatever the reason, he is reduced to drawing from the stack, looking for either a black seven or a red five. Or an ace, even. Any ace would be good.

Warren is plotting something. He knows it. He can _feel_ it. He and Etta both. He has suspected this for days and kept that suspicion to himself, so it is not wholly to do with whoever fired on him last night but that may well tie in. Between the two of them they have something cooked up, and he would not be surprised if Colonel De Chagny were also part of the conspiracy.

But what are they planning? What could it be? Is it related to whoever shot Fahim? And if it is, why have they not taken him into their confidence? He knows Fahim longer than any of them, certainly longer than the Colonel does, longer than he even knows Warren! And he is the one who cut the bullet out of him and put him back together! He has every right to know if their secret arrangements are related to that!

And if it could in any possible way have anything to do with his wounded arm, then he has doubly the right to know!

He would ask Warren. Would have asked him at any time over the last few days, would wake him and ask him now, if he thought it would do any good. But Warren would fob him off, would tell him that he is imagining these things and he has nothing to worry about and there is no conspiracy and it would not get him anywhere at all, only even more frustrated. And he might ask Etta, but Etta would give him the same answers, and it is pointless trying to talk to the Colonel. No. Warren is his man. If there were _some_ way of working him around.

Sexual favours, perhaps. Get him worked up with his hand, with whispers in his ear, with kisses in sensitive places, and when he is at the edge spring the question on him as the condition of satisfaction. It is what Etta would do. But such a plan has every chance of backfiring and merely thinking about it is enough to make sweat break out on his skin, and not just because of his fever.

The fever that’s leaving him lightheaded now, rising ready to knock him flat. No, such a plan would never do. Not in his condition. It could be days before he is up to it, and by then it might be too late.

If Warren gets hurt because of this plotting—

Christ but he needs a cigar, needs to put such things from his mind. But his lungs are too delicate tonight to handle the smoke and it’s just one more frustration.

A rustle from behind him, a creak, and then Warren’s voice, sleep-roughened, “come back to bed.”

He may as well. He’s not getting anywhere sitting, here and coming up several cards short.

In one swift move he shuffles the cards together, throws off his coat, and blows out the candle. And back in bed Warren nuzzles into his hair, but even his arms are infuriating tonight.

* * *

The early morning light is soft behind his eyes. Some soft movement woke him, filtering through his dreams. The brush of fingers on the back of his hand, and for a moment a face coalesces in front of him, twisted lips, pockmarked skin, and that light touch traces the edge of his cheek.

“Go back to sleep, dear Fahim.” Faint words whispered into his ear. “This will end tonight, I promise.”

* * *

 

It is afternoon, again, and they are playing cards, and Henry tries not to see how pale Etta is, tries not to think about the way her gaze flickered when she entered the room and she pulled him into an embrace that jarred his arm and made him hiss in pain. If ever he needed confirmation that there is something going on that he is not part of, there it was.

They are not playing for money, not this time. They have kept it to a simple game, toothpicks and cigars. It is best that he give them up, really. They are too much irritation, especially after all his chest has been through these last few weeks. Besides, he and Warren discussed matters this morning, quietly in bed, about him taking care of himself and Warren not taking unnecessary risks (and he got some satisfaction from Warren’s affronted look when he brought that up, and specifically mentioned not going on any posses). They have agreed, have sworn off fear and worry, though Warren has retained the right to make his feelings known if he considers that Henry is pushing himself too much. An easy arrangement, signed with a kiss and press of fingers.

They should have come to it years ago.

As it is, the cigars are in play. He is feeding them to Etta, knowing she favours that particular blend, but also to keep himself from being tempted. It is wise not to let cigars pass into Warren’s hands, lest he attempt to seek them out in one of his, ah, _lower_ moments.

Mrs Cummings brought him up tea earlier, and though it has long-since gone cold, he sips the remains of it. The dash of honey is enough to soothe the lingering rawness in his throat, and Warren catches his eye and smiles, ever so slightly.

“I call.” His voice is soft, and Henry has to restrain the urge not to lean over and kiss him.

“Nothing much. Just two pair.”

Etta produces a straight, and another cigar crosses the writing desk to her.

She is just tucking it into her pocket, and Henry is dealing, when the knock comes to the door.

It is an automatic response, for Henry to rise from the edge of the bed to get it, but Warren’s hand moves faster then he does and brushes his arm, gently pushing him down.

“I’ll get it.” And he sets his cards aside and stands, back cracking as he stretches. Henry continues his deal, another card to each of them, and the door latch clicks as Warren opens it.

And Colonel De Chagny is framed there, hat tilted back, leaning on his cane. Even at this distance Henry can see the flicker of his eyes, from Warren, to him, to Etta, and back to Warren.

He seems to consider something a moment, before he steps in, and Warren closes the door behind him.

The words he speaks are low, and across the table Etta stiffens.

“I have something you need to know.”


	17. Unglued

Later, Philippe will wonder why he chose that moment to draw up what he knows. Why he chose that afternoon of that day. Why he elected to tell Russell, and Stapp, and Etta all at once. Why he did not go to the Marshal.

Why he did not take matters into his own hands.

Later, Philippe De Chagny, ex-Colonel, lame in one leg, late of the cavalry, will wonder a great many things.

But it will be while he kneels in the dirt, holding Etta in his arms, trying to stop the bleeding.

And Warren will be staring dazed at the scene in front of him, at Philippe and Etta, and the body stretched out beside them, the spreading pool of blood, even while the world tilts around him, and his ears catch the crunch of bootsteps in the alley.

And Henry will be incapacitated, breaths coming short and sharp and tears in his eyes, desperately praying, _please let Warren be safe, please God let Warren be safe_.

But such wondering, such thinking, such desperate praying, is hours away yet, still unknown, undreamt of. For now, Philippe hobbles in, and accepts the chair that Etta offers him, and nods his head towards the bottle of whiskey Henry tilts his way. And Warren closes the door, settles back beside Henry on the edge of their bed, and frowns over the desk at Philippe, waiting for him to speak.

Philippe sips his whiskey, and, reaching into his pocket, withdraws the bullet casing he found in the dirt yesterday morning.

* * *

 

It is the fact of how secure De Chagny is in his information that seals the deal. He has identified the bullet, identified the likely gunman, fathomed out the likely reason. (“That whole _story_ ,” and his eyes flicker, “about your friend the Deputy being thrown by his horse, and Erik’s escape. “) And when Etta asks him how he can be so certain, he gives the slightest smirk as he replies, “I did not become a Colonel because of how many rebs I shot in the war.”

Henry’s heart falters, feeling suddenly faint, and desire burn within him to throw himself across the desk and tear the man apart. But Warren squeezes his hand, their fingers tightly laced, and slowly he gets his breath and comes back to himself.

Still. He would dearly love to run, to get out of this room and go somewhere and not have to see De Chagny, not have to be reminded of anything that happened back then, of those days that still leave him waking terrified in the night. But Warren’s fingers anchor him, remind him that this is where he needs to be, where he _has_ to be, and when De Chagny inclines his head and says, “No offense intended, Doctor Russell,” Henry nods, his throat too tight to speak.

He did not fight in the war. How could he have? He was only a child at the time. But that damn war was the pivotal moment, it changed everything, and if it were not for that, he, too, may be wearing the blue today, may be stationed at a fort somewhere with men saluting him, and have never met Warren, or Etta, or Fahim, or any of the friends he holds so dear.

(Well, perhaps some good did come from all that happened.)

He is aware that the others are still talking, their voices drifting around him, and the relevance comes to him slowly, words disjointed from faces and expressions. A “we can’t do anything about it tonight anyway,” and for a moment he thinks it is another reference to the war, his brain running away on him, but of course it is not, of course it is related to the matter at hand, to who shot at him and did shoot Fahim.

“I want to be part of it.” His own voice catches him off guard, and as soon as the words are out he realises that they are true. He does want to be part of it, whatever they are all cooking up. He _needs_ to be part of it, to take charge of this one part of his Fate, and he clears his throat, squeezes Warren’s fingers back to keep him from interrupting. “Whatever it is you’re planning to do over—over this.” And he waves his hand at the bullet casing on the table. “Considering he tried to kill me I think I’m entitled to be part of it.”

Etta’s nod is barely perceptible, and De Chagny makes a noncommittal expression, but it is Warren that Henry’s attention is focused on, Warren whose reaction matters to him and only Warren’s.

Warren, who is looking at him with torn eyes as if some great battle is being waged within him, his jaw clenched tight. And Henry squeezes his hand again, a silent question, and finally, finally, Warren nods, ever so slightly.

“All right,” he breathes. “All right.”

* * *

 

He must have imagined it. It is the only explanation. How could Erik have come to him in the night? Have held his hand and kissed him and called him _dear Fahim_? It is another dream, born from idleness and pain and desperation. Simply a dream.

But if it _were_ a dream, how come he can still feel those lips, pressed to his forehead, as if an imprint in his skin? An exceptionally vivid dream, perhaps.

He was alone, of course, when he woke. No Erik, and yet the curtains were open, the windows, light flooding the room, and surely there is some explanation for it, perhaps Etta did it to tempt in some fresh air, but the possibility sits wrong in his mind, something prickling, whispering, as if he has seen this before.

And those words. _This will end tonight_. What is that supposed to mean? Yes, it is vague enough that he may have just dreamt it, but he never remembers the words in his dreams, not as sharply as those ones, not as clear. They echo in his ears, weave through his brain.

As if Erik were truly here.

But why would Erik be here? And what could possibly end tonight?

So many questions, too many questions. Always too many questions.

* * *

 

Why did they even come here to Fort Griffin? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Traveling in from Austin, following the gambling circuit. Fahim was already here and that made it easier. None of this would have happened if they had not been here. They could have gone on to Arizona, like Warren wanted, for the silver mines, and maybe they could have persuaded Fahim to join them. Surely there must be an abundance of law-work out there. Or even if they had gone to Las Vegas when Warren first heard about it late last year in Dodge, sharing a smoke with a gambler. Luke Short, it may have been. And ever since Warren has been plaguing him that they should try the hot springs. There is some merit to the theory. Some of the research coming out of Europe has been advocating natural hot water. And mountain air, and rest, and temperance, and contradicting theories on exertion.

If he ascribed to every theory that was ever suggested about his illness—

But would that they were in Las Vegas now, and none of this were happening.

His arm has stiffened, has begun to ache, braced over his head too long against the window frame, but he has not been watching anything down there. It is merely more of the same. The same people that appear every evening at about this time, the same bustling rush to the saloons and dancehalls and brothels. The same, the same, the same.

Christ, but he needs a change of scene.

Christ, but he cannot do anything until this is finished, until Fahim is well. It would not be right for him to consider leaving before Fahim is well, would be an act of the worst abandonment.

His fingers itch for a cigar, to fiddle with it, to stroke it and twirl it and light it, but he balls his hand into a fist and swallows.

“Here.” And Warren is behind him, is loosening his grip on the window frame and guiding him to bed.

They lie down, him on his right side and Warren behind him, pressed close, chest to back, breath warm on the back of his neck.

And when Warren’s arm wraps around him, Henry slowly pulls his shirt from his trousers, and guides Warren’s hand to rest over his navel, fingers just dipping beneath the waistband.

“Please,” he murmurs, the longing twisting inside of him with the anxiety, the desperation, the restlessness, every fiber of him burning for touch, and Warren’s lips are soft as they brush his neck.

“If you’re certain.”

* * *

 

When dawn breaks, she will have to ride out of town and find Erik, tell him the news. Even when Philippe told them, it was too late to try and head out. She and Erik agreed on a meeting place that first evening when she met him in Fahim’s room, half a day’s ride away for his own protection. If she left now, if she had left even then, she would be all night out there trying to find him, might possibly even get herself shot in the attempt. No. It is best to wait until morning.

Philippe settles on the edge of the bed beside her, takes her hand and squeezes it. “What are you thinking about?

Sweet man. Of course he knows nothing about Erik. Nothing about Fahim’s involvement with him, nothing about her own arrangement, and it is better that way. If she can at all she will keep him out of this. No sense in him getting dragged into something that was never supposed to involve him.

Though she is immensely thankful that he found the bullet casing. Without that they might never have gotten anywhere.

So she smiles at him, now, and squeezes his hand back.

“Oh, nothing in particular.”

“You look awfully intent for thinking about nothing in particular.” Damn the man and his eyes for learning to read her so fast.

“This whole mess is just getting to me I suppose.”

He makes a face as if to say _maybe so_ , and disentangles their fingers, reaching for the bottle of whiskey he has taken to keeping on the bedside locker. “Your friends, Russell and Stapp, they’re very close.”

Her blood chills at the words, and she prays her face doesn’t give her away as she takes the glass he offers her. “You could say that. Warren has always been very good to Henry with his illness.” _And that’s the very least of it_ , she thinks but does not add.

“Etta,” and he is looking her dead in the eye, a slightly amused crinkling around his mouth, “I may have been a Colonel, but I was more than aware of some of the things that went on with the men. I know the two of them are,” and he pauses, “ _involved_. As far as I’m concerned, if that is the reason Russell is managing his illness, then it’s probably only a good thing.” And he nods, as if that is all that could ever need to be said on the matter.

The words catch her off guard. They are more than she ever expected to hear, are better, a thousand times away better, than any term of endearment could be. And her heart swells, and it’s all she can do to keep the tears from her eyes as she sets down her glass of whiskey, and eases his from his hand to set beside it, and leans in, presses her lips to his.

He chuckles into her mouth. “I suppose I said something right.”

“Damn right you did,” and she pushes him gently down, settles herself more comfortably on top of him. His hands are already fumbling at the buttons of her waistcoat, and he gets it open as she slides her hand up his shirt, his warm skin sending a thrill through her, one of his hands already cupping her breast, and she does not hear the creak of the door, not at first.

It registers only when she hears the click of a revolver at her ear.

Philippe groans beneath her and she breaks off their kiss to look up at the intruder.

And finds Erik’s piercing eyes glaring back at her.

The first thought that comes to her is that she not wearing her pistols and _why is she not wearing her pistols?_ But there’s a knife in her boot and if she could just reach for it—but why waste time when she could just throw herself at Erik and get the gun off him? And it is such a simple solution that she is already straddling him on the floor, his own revolver in her hand pointed into his face, before it quite comes to her.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Which of them asks it first she cannot be certain, but her voice mingles with Erik’s and then she is glaring back at him, cocking his pistol.

“I _came_ ,” and Erik’s voice is little more than a hiss, “because _he’s_ the one that shot Fahim. And I find you here, liaising with him!”

She hisses back, “it wasn’t him. We know that, Erik, I told you that. He was with the Marshal! Thirty people saw him!”

He raises his head, lip curled back in a snarl. “They could have been bribed to say that!”

“They weren’t! And besides, we know who did and we know why, and he shot at Henry too two nights ago.”

“And why didn’t you tell me?” His eyes flash and she is suddenly aware of how easily he could flip her over and wrestle the pistol back from her, but she clenches her jaw and wills her grip to remain steady. Lord help her but if he tries anything she _will_ shoot.

“Because we only found out two hours ago and it was too late to ride for you. I was planning to head out in the morning.”

Erik is silent staring up at her, and out of the side of her eye she sees Philippe fixing his clothes, and she swings around to aim at him, fresh fear pumping in her heart. If he tells anyone they’ll lock her up, they’ll kill Erik, they’ll break Fahim’s heart. He can’t tell anyone. He must not tell anyone. “And don’t you go anywhere!”

He throws his hands in the air, eyes wild. “What the hell do you expect me to do! A wanted murderer turns up in my room to kill me and it turns out my—my— _you_ have been in league with him! What the fucking hell am I supposed to do, Etta?”

An odd calm spreads through her and she swallows, voice even. “You can either help us or I can shoot you where you stand.”

His eyes meet hers, colder than she has ever seen them. “I don’t suppose I have much of a choice, do I?”

And in that moment, she knows exactly how to use him.

* * *

 

It is the knock on the door that pulls Warren to wakefulness in his warm space pressed to Henry’s back, and the insistency of it makes him groan, makes him suddenly wish for deafness. Henry sleeps on, snoring softly, peacefully oblivious as Warren slips out from beneath the sheets and smooths a hand through his hair, tucks his shirt back into his trousers and buckles his belt. Best that he at least appear somewhat decorous.

A third knock, louder than the others, and his heart stalls thinking that Henry might have woken but no, his snores are still the same, and swallowing, bracing himself, he pulls the door open.

He steps out of the way just in time for Erik to stumble in (Erik? What? He’s supposed out of town on his way to Mexico, what the hell is he doing here?), Etta behind him, pushing him, and Colonel De Chagny bringing up the rear.

Etta opens her mouth to speak, and Erik mutters some protest, but Warren shakes his head, cuts the two of them off as he shuts the door.

“Be quiet. I’ve barely gotten him,” and he jerks his head towards Henry, still curled on his side and snoring, “to sleep and I’d prefer if he stays that way.” If Henry so much as _snuffles_ he’ll throw the three of them out. He needs sleep, dammit, and Etta should know that well enough by now.

The three arrivals nod and Warren stands back on his heels, arms folded. “Now what is it?”

And Etta’s eyes slide towards Henry before meeting Warren’s, and she whispers, “We need your clothes.”


	18. The Hazards of Love, pt.1

Warren is the one closest in height to Erik, and even he is a shade shorter and a touch broader, so that Erik looks as if he has grown several inches while simultaneously becoming narrower since he acquired the clothes he is wearing. But it would not do to let him wear his own clothes, not covered in trail dust and threadbare as they are. The dust would only make him stand out and that is the one thing they cannot have tonight.

Still. Logical as it is for him to raid Warren’s wardrobe, Erik has not stop muttering under his breath since changing, and Etta has kicked his own clothes under her bed to keep him from shooting longing glances at them. And De Chagny (she refuses to call him Philippe now, not when she needs to focus on the matter at hand), sitting on the edge of her bed, is stony-faced and silent as she pushes Erik down into her chair and glares him into silence.

Up close, his face is even more of a mess than she suspected, and she is grateful for having had the presence of mind to pack her stage make-up when she galloped out from Austin. “…think I can hide some of this…” she murmurs, more to herself than anyone else. One of her false moustaches should certainly help. And she knows she has boot polish here somewhere to change the colour of it. She bought some just the other day to give herself an extra bit of pep…

The earring will certainly have to come out though. It’s a very nice earring, a turquoise stone set in silver, worn at one corner. But he cannot possibly wear it tonight, and she ignores the growl low in his throat when she takes it out.

Some sacrifices do need to be made.

* * *

 

He drifts towards wakefulness with the soft touch of fingers on his cheek. Low words, murmured in his ear, and he moans, leans into that touch, those words, faint as gossamer. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you, and I’ll always protect you, I promise. I’m sorry.” Warren, Warren, always Warren, by his side, loving him, and he could not live without him, could not bear to draw a single breath if Warren were not here. And he is tired, so very very tired, deep in his bones, and he sighs at the press of lips to his, the brush of them against his forehead. And the light caress of fingers through his hair carries him away.

* * *

 

Etta would have preferred to go straight out and find Buquet wherever he has fetched up tonight (and restrain the urge to lay into him for what he’s done because they have a plan, dammit, and Erik and Warren have a greater right to tear him apart than she does, though they have agreed to save a piece of him for her) but Warren hasn’t come back yet from finding him, so she gives in to Erik’s insistence to stop in with Fahim.

And the tenderness of the scene that unfolds before her is enough to make her feel like she is gawking at something deeply private. She averts her gaze, but not before she sees the way Erik cradles Fahim’s hands, the way he kisses his forehead and leans in to whisper in his ear. She does not catch the words, she does not wish to, but though Erik is remarkably well disguised (and even De Chagny had to grudgingly grant that she had done good work), she saw the moment Fahim’s face softened with recognition, and how he squeezed his hands back, and her heart throbbed with the effort to not look at De Chagny.

But even out of the side of her eye, she sees the way his gaze dances to her, just for a moment, a faint frown creasing his face before he makes himself busy with his watch, and a tiny flame of hope flickers in her chest that he might be able to understand why she’s kept so much from him.

The hope is edged with guilt, and she smooths her fingers over the butt of her revolver, swallows to steady herself. She will not give in to guilt. She has no reason to. It is not that she lied so much as she neglected to wholly explain herself, and yes, if she not been with De Chagny when Erik came to kill him then he would likely be dead by now, but she tried to protect him. She did what she could. She exonerated him to herself and told Erik that and it can hardly be her fault that Erik continued to hold his own suspicions. Guilt has no right to come to her now. Anything she’s done has been for the sake of her friends, her family! They are all she has and surely De Chagny could not begrudge her for protecting them.

She did the same for him. It is not her fault that not knowing turned out to be more dangerous than knowing.

The door creaks, and her revolver is already in her hand as she whips around but it is only Warren. And he is oddly pale, his face tight, as he jerks his head towards the hallway, and though it is not a good idea to discuss this where they may be overheard, it is best that Fahim not hear, that he be kept innocent of the whole affair, and De Chagny inclines his head towards her, and Erik nods before they all step out, and Warren closes the door softly behind them, the narrow hallway crowded tight with the four of them together..

His voice is a whisper when he speaks, and they all have to lean closer to hear.

“The Enola have replaced Buquet with another piano player from New Orleans.” And Etta could swear just hearing it, the whole plan gone up in smoke, but she bites her tongue and nods for Warren to continue. “Reyer or something like that. Doesn’t matter. Buquet’s playing poker in the Alhambra with your brother,” he nods towards De Chagny, “and a couple of others.”

Playing poker? Well. That—that might just do. And already she feels the tendrils of a new plan form as her gaze drifts to De Chagny, and she swallows, snaps back to look at Warren. “We’ll slip out the back door,” she murmurs, “and see what we’ll do.”

* * *

 

_ We’ll be together soon, I promise…together soon…together  _ and the words keep circling in his mind, swirling in each thought. Erik was here. Erik kissed his forehead, and squeezed his hand, and even behind the moustache, behind the face that was at once his and not his, Fahim knew it was him, could feel it was him, even before he caught the eyes, and he would know those eyes anymore.

And the memories that came in a rush at the faint brush of those lips each took the breath from his lungs. Erik’s face streaked in blood. Erik’s lopsided grin. Erik’s eyes meeting his over a fire, through the darkness, across their horses. Erik straight-backed and proud atop his mare even with his wrists bound. Long fingers buckling a gunbelt, twining with his, brushing his cheek, tracing his hip. The warm smell of horse and saddle leather and sweat. The sharpness of whiskey off a tongue, burning his mouth. Every moment, all of it.

All of it real. All of it true. All of it happened. And he did not dream the cheek pressed to his, the lips brushing his fingers, the soft promises of riding together, of music, of being held beneath the stars. Did not dream those precious words,  _ together soon _ .

Erik came to him.

And his heart is so full, so heavy in his chest that it’s hard to breathe but it’s a good heaviness and there are no words for it, for how it weighs within him but there does not need to be, not when Erik is real, not when what they had and can have is real, not when Erik kissed him. And his eyes prickle with the tears, his very blood throbbing, aching for more, and as they trickle down his cheeks he does not try to stop them because every tear is an affirmation, every little gasp that escapes his lips is an answer to that promise murmured in his ear, the longing and relief inside of him more than he could ever begin to contain.

* * *

 

His eyes flicker open to darkness, the pain in his shoulders pulling him to wakefulness. His arms are behind his back. Why are they behind his back? And he tries to move, tries to shake off the pain but his hands catch, caught, the toughness of rope scratching his wrist and he’s tied, oh God he’s tied and he tries to roll away, tries to stretch his legs but his ankles are trapped too, the rope biting into him and his heart pounds, sweat breaking cold on his skin and he needs to get away, needs to get free but he can’t call, can’t cry out or he’ll start coughing and he won’t be able to stop, won’t be able to wipe the blood away if it comes and even thinking about it makes the iron and salt rise in his throat and he gags on it, gasps, shoulders burning, legs throbbing, and the tears come unstoppable, rolling down his face, icy fear gripping his heart with the sudden question of,  _ where’s Warren? Where’s Warren? If I’m tied where’s Warren? _

* * *

The first stage of the plan is straightforward, and they enact it without complication. It is Warren who enters the saloon first, still ungodly pale, but steady and oddly calm as he nods for a whiskey and sits to watch the poker game, one leg crossed over the other, as he has done so many times, as if he were waiting idly for Henry to show. He raises his glass to the Marshal, nods to a couple of boys he recognises from the ranches, shakes his head at the saloon girl who makes half an attempt to approach. All ordinary, all normal, all completely unremarkable.

Philippe comes next, seven minutes later, leaning on his cane and looking tired. He nods to Warren, nods to the Marshal and several young soldiers down from the fort, and smiles slightly, tipping his hat at the same saloon girl who makes an effort to approach him, knowing he is always good for an extra tip or three, but tonight he gives a slight shake of his head and catches Raoul’s eye. Raoul smiles up at him, inclines his head towards a table near the back, and Philippe nods as his brother cashes out, and they go, together, to the table at the back.

Warren settles in to Raoul’s vacated seat, and Buquet deals him in, oblivious that he is playing in to what they want.

The whole transition takes under three minutes, and Warren has just picked up his cards when Erik shuffles in. Erik, in full costume, half-stooped and with Henry’s borrowed cane, the full appearance of a once-prosperous gentleman who has fallen on hard times and on hard health, and not that of an agile and decidedly dangerous gunfighter and knife artist. He buys a bottle of whiskey, and the saloon girl pays him no mind as he hobbles to the table shared by Philippe and Raoul, and in a silent gesture of his bottle asks to join them. Philippe nods, and Erik fills the glasses of both brothers, and inquires in broad New England vowels if they’ve heard of the new silver mines in Pima County, Arizona.

And it is then, at last, that Etta makes her move. She has preened herself, has smoothed any wrinkles from her suit, and walks with slightly more of a sway to her hips than usual, as if she were wearing a moderately revealing dress. She passes no remarks over the Marshal, the soldiers, the cowhands, the gamblers, or any number of drifters, knowing they cannot help glancing sideways at her even as they feign disinterest, but she winks at Liza the saloon girl that she shared a bed with several nights ago, and who now has to suppress a blush as she turns her attention to a sergeant who has just traced his fingers down her arm.

Etta sprawls in a chair beside Buquet, the man wholly and unknowingly surrounded, and nods to Warren who pretends not to see her but who, in fact, is watching her every twitch. She draws a flask from a pocket with the grace with which she has seen Henry make the same move a hundred times, but she is sipping cold tea instead of whiskey. Her eyes linger on the table, on the spread of cards, even as her attention is focused to a sharp point on Buquet, and when Warren wins his first hand in the game, she leans in, lays her hand on Buquet’s leg and squeezes lightly, enough to get his attention, his head turning ever so slightly towards her, eyes focused on the cowhand now dealing. Etta winks at the dealer, and smiles against Buquet’s ear, her gaze drifting towards Philippe as she whispers, “you know De Chagny is a terribly jealous man.”

And the plan is in motion.


	19. The Hazards of Love, pt.2

Etta works on wooing Buquet, all the while keeping an eye on the boys. (Since when did she come to count Erik and De Chagny as some of the boys? She doesn’t know and yet the thought seems to fit them, though they are each so much older than her. And in the back of her mind she puzzles over it, even as Buquet lays his hand on her thigh and she knows she’s getting somewhere.)

Warren wins and loses several hands, then cashes out still several hundred dollars to the good, muttering something about going to take his chances bucking the tiger. And as he departs, Raoul De Chagny sits back in on the game, bright-eyed and cheerful. His brother comes to stand at his shoulder, and scowls at Buquet, his jaw tightening when he sees Etta’s loosened cravat, the buttons she has opened at the top of her shirt. Just enough to show off her collarbones, and give a hint of the swell of her breasts. His eyes blaze as they meet hers, before they flick to Buquet and he leans back on his heel, knuckles tightening on his cane.

The moment passes, and he stretches out his free hand to take Liza’s hand, smiling down at her and glancing sideways at Etta. An uncomfortable feeling bubbles up in Etta’s stomach, though she knows, logically, that it is all part of the plan. All part of the plan, all false, but why does she want to reach out and break Philippe’s grip on Liza and send her on her way? It’s not real.

Not real, but she has to act as if it is. And she leans closer to Buquet, lets her fingers dangle, trace his inner thigh (lightly, lightly) and a shiver runs through him. Philippe purses his lips, a barely perceptible shift, and he leans in, murmurs something in Liza’s ear before kissing her hand and leading her out.

Etta turns her attention back to Buquet, flutters her lashes at him and lights a cigar. She takes the first puff of it to get it going, passes it to his mouth, and he dips his head to take it, a faint memory drifting before her of that Elder woman doing the same with her dentist gambler, and she shakes her head to clear it. She can afford no distractions tonight.

Out of the side of her eye she sees Erik shuffle out, still bent double and leaning heavily on Henry’s cane. Good. Another few minutes and they will all be in position.

Her fingers still rest against Buquet’s inner thigh, and she trails them a little higher (slowly, slowly), brushes the bulge just becoming apparent now in his trousers. He inhales sharply, coughs on the cigar smoke, and his eyes flick to hers, deep brown with flecks of green. They might almost be beautiful, if they belonged to anyone else.

He nods, just slightly, and she smiles, leans closer. In spite of herself, in spite of why she’s here, in spite of everything she knows, she cannot help the faint bubble of pride deep in her chest. She gave up these ways long ago, found other means to attain what she wanted, but it is oddly pleasing to know that she’s still got it.

And beside the bubble of pride, flares a little flame of self-hatred. She clamps down it, forbids herself to feel it. She is not leading Buquet on for her own pleasure. All she will gain from it is the pleasure of helping to kill him for what he’s done. There is no need for her to hate herself.

She is in control again a moment later, when he calls the cards and lays down his winning hand, kings and aces. Then he stubs out the cigar, and gathers his cash, nodding to Raoul and the other players.

“Gentlemen, I do believe I have found better entertainment. Good night.”

* * *

 

The memory feels distant, vague, of Warren’s voice whispering to him that he is sorry, that he will always protect him and he is sorry, and no sooner do the words echo in his ears than the pieces slot together. Warren tied him. Warren left him like this. Warren lied to him that he would let him be part of dealing with Buquet, and then tied him up to be sure he couldn’t be part of it. It’s because of Warren he’s here’s, because of Warren his shoulders are aching and his legs are throbbing and his throat is raw from coughing.

And the tears come hot, rolling down his cheeks unstoppable. Warren, Warren, it’s all Warren and the pain lances through his chest, pierces him right to the core and he’ll die with it, with the sharp pain that sears every breath. And betrayal weighs heavy in his stomach, hollow. Warren lied to him, Warren betrayed him. Warren tied him up as if he were—as if he were a horse or a steer to be controlled!

But Warren’s gone to deal with Buquet himself, and fresh fear flares in Henry’s heart. If something happened to Warren, if he were hurt, if he were killed!

He’s going to be sick. The bile rises hot in his throat, the taste acid in his mouth as he swallows it down. He couldn’t survive if Warren died. He couldn’t, he knows that, he can feel it. If Warren died he would die too, and he has no doubt and now he won’t know, won’t know until it’s too late if something has happened, won’t be there to cradle his hand, to try to save him, to promise him that he loves him, he loves him, he loves him, and he can’t forgive him for this, he can’t, but he couldn’t bear it if he died.

* * *

 

Fort Griffin is a dying town. It is a simple fact, one that becomes more and more apparent each month. Once upon a time, this was the liveliest place she knew, but now everyone has roved off elsewhere. Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona and Dodge, and Griffin can hang for all they care. And they might be right, but tonight Etta is grateful. The dying of Fort Griffin has left the east side of town deserted.

The east side of town, where she has reached now, Buquet at her side. She’s told him she has a room staked out here, where they can have a bit of peace for the night without interfering landladies and jealous lovers. A bald-faced lie, of course, but how could he know that?

Erik has a room staked out, though. A room where nobody will be able to hear Buquet scream. And when he admitted that he had never left town at all, that he has been lurking here all along, she could not truly say that she was surprised. If it were her lover laid up after a gunshot wound (if it were De Chag—no, no, she will not go there) then she could hardly see herself leaving town either.

This is it. The agreed place. A dark street between empty buildings. Warren, Erik, and De Chagny are each hiding in the alleys either side, waiting for her signal. She swallows a breath, her heart slowing, calm flowing through her.

This is it.

And she reaches for her revolver.

But Buquet is faster. Her fingers just brush the handle at her right hip when a hand grabs her arm, twists it up behind her back and she gasps, the cold edge of a knife pressed to her throat.

Her breath catches, and time stops.

_…stupid stupid too stupid…_

His voice is a low rumble in her ear. Her skin crawls.

“So who has me covered, hmmm? Is it your cavalry man? Have you roped him into this? Or is it Stapp? I bet it’s Stapp. I hear he can’t go back to the Dakota country. Or is it that doctor? I knew I should have finished him off when I had the chance…” and on he goes, whispering, and a cold sweat breaks out on her forehead. He’s going to kill her, he’s going to kill them all like he tried to kill Fahim and after he kills her he’ll kill Warren and Erik and Philippe and no one will find them out here, no one will be able to stop him and he’ll go to the boardinghouse and kill Henry and finish off Fahim for good measure and she can’t let him she won’t let him and whatever about her, whatever about Erik, but what did the others ever do? What did Henry and Fahim ever do only try to help people? What did Philippe ever do only go and be a soldier? She can’t let him kill them, she can’t let him, and if she could move she’d reach for the knife in her boot, or draw the small dagger secreted in her waistcoat. But she can’t move or he’ll slit her throat, she can’t move, she can’t protect them. The last time someone had a knife to her throat they were going to hang her, they grabbed by the throat and tried to choke the life out of her and she can still feel the rope rough on her skin. And tears spring to her eyes but she wills them back, wills them to dry. This is her fault. She does not deserve the release of crying. She should have thought of a better plan. Should have just let Erik go in and shoot him down. _Goddammit she will not give him the satisfaction of crying._

But he is still talking, his words worming into her brain. “I was never going to go for you. You were never part of it. But that Deputy let Erik go, and your friends were there, and they have to pay for what they did. You understand that right.” And the words ground her, bring her back from the swirling memories, the nightmares making her skin crawl. Philippe was right. It was all because of Erik’s escape, of Fahim letting him go and Philippe didn’t believe the story about the thunderstorm so why would Buquet? The flicker of relief at Philippe being right is drowned out by a fresh wave of terror. If Philippe didn’t believe Fahim, if Buquet didn’t, did anyone? Or do they all think Fahim was in league with Erik and just let him go?

Warren’s voice cuts through the spiral threatening to overwhelm her, and her fear turns icy cold. “You want me?” His voice is steady, ringing clear as he steps out in front of them from the alley to their left, his arms wide open. He doesn’t look at her, looks over her shoulder at Buquet, and his face is harder than she has ever seen it before, as if a mask has come down shuttering the Warren she has always known. “Take me. You can kill her if you want, but it won’t do you any good, and you’ve been planning to kill me anyway, so,” and he opens his hands to show they’re empty, no knife, no gun, not even a derringer, “here’s your chance.”

A flash. Warren sprawled on the ground, his eyes hollow staring at the sky, blood pouring from his chest, Henry kneeling beside him, cradling his face, kissing him. Like the nightmare that made her wake in a sweat but the other way around, and her vision darkens, legs buckling, but the knife is sharp at her throat, a promise of what’s coming to her, and she  wills herself to keep standing.

The street comes back into view, the stars twinkling overhead, the darkened buildings, Warren in front of her, tall and defiant, arms still spread.

And then Philippe is stepping out, coming from their right, lazily holding a cigar though she’s never seen him smoke. And he doesn’t meet her gaze, doesn’t look to Warren, only has eyes for Buquet. His voice when it comes is a slow drawl, so unlike how he usually sounds that her blood runs cold. “Personally, Mister Buquet, I’d prefer if you shot Stapp and let Etta live.” He brings the cigar to his lips, puffs on it, then nods. “True, there are a great many things she neglected to tell me, but I find I’ve become rather attached to her. She’s,” and he smirks, smirks in a way that is wholly unnatural to his face, and the knots in her stomach tighten, bile threatening to rise, “quite talented.” He flicks the cigar away, and for the briefest moment his eyes meet hers, and she knows, knows he and Warren have worked this ruse out between them, knows Erik must have crept up behind Buquet, and she rears back hard, pain lancing across her throat, and digs her elbow into Buquet’s stomach.

She slips from his grasp, and an odd gurgling sound comes from him as she spins around, finds Erik tightening a thin piece of cord around his throat like what he must have used to kill the shotgun rider and is it her imagination or is the skin already splitting?

“Looking for Erik were you?” And Erik’s voice is a hiss, his face twisted into a snarl. “Your cousin made that mistake too.” And he snaps the cord tight, Buquet’s eyes bulging wide, falling helplessly on her as if he might save him, as if she might ever bring herself to.

And all she can think is, _I’ll shoot him, I’ll shoot him_ , the bastard was going to kill her she deserves to shoot him she still has time before Erik finishes strangling him. And her revolver is already in her hand, already cocked, but Warren gets in the way. Warren takes the knife still held loose in Buquet’s hand and tears open his waistcoat and shirt. It is as if she is in a dream, watching, as if the world as been slowed down, each second stretching to an eternity as Warren buries the knife in Buquet’s stomach, wrenches it back out and the blood spills with it, spilling dark over his pale skin that glows in the light of the moon.

Etta’s knees buckle, the world swaying, tilting around her. She feels her gun drop from her hand as if it is separate from her, disconnected, watches it fall and hit the dust, and pain sears suddenly sharp across her neck, makes her gasp. She presses her hand to it, feels it wet, and her fingers are dark before her, blackened. Philippe’s arms come around her, his hand pressing to her throat, and she hears a soft thump and out of the side of her eye sees Buquet hit the ground, the same ground that’s hard beneath her knees. (When did she fall? She doesn’t remember falling.)

A voice in her ears, the words hoarse. Philippe, and she can’t make out what he’s saying, can only see Warren, swaying as he kneels, his eyes blank and faraway. Then he blinks and looks at her, looks over her shoulder to Philippe and something seems to pass between them, some secret understanding. Then Erik is standing beside Warren, kneeling beside him, reaching towards her, and part of her longs to shy away, and part of her whispers to trust him, that she can trust him.

He pries Philippe’s hand away from her throat, and his touch is a ghost against her skin. He frowns, then nods to himself as his gaze meets hers. “It’s only a flesh wound. Go home and get Russell to bandage it.” He leans in, seems to hesitate a moment, then squeezes her hand, and sits back on his heels, pushes himself to his feet. “All of you go back. I’ll be along shortly.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two wonderful pieces of art have been done recently for this:  
> This first one by therosenpants: http://littlelonghairedoutlaw.tumblr.com/post/175126526296/if-you-drew-western-auerik-in-3d-i-would-love-you  
> And this second one by flapjacku/haiwindy: http://littlelonghairedoutlaw.tumblr.com/post/175438782986/flapjacku-so-i-hope-you-dont-mind-but-i
> 
> So if you're a Tumblr person, please do give them some love!


	20. Breaking Down

She blinks, and comes to herself before the door of a room. She has no memory of leaving the alleyway, no memory of climbing the stairs, only a vague sense of someone behind her (Philippe?) and it is as if she is watching from the distance, as if the hand opening the door is not her hand, is disembodied and floating in the air, and the door is swinging open, swinging open and Warren (when did he get ahead of her? She thought he was behind with Philippe) is stooped over the bed, and she catches a glimpse of rope.

Rope?

It doesn’t make sense. Why does nothing make sense?

She sways, closes her eyes a long moment, tries to get her breath. Pain shoots sharp across her neck. Pain? Oh. Yes. She was wounded, wasn’t she? That happened to her? Not to Edwin? But even if it had happened to Edwin she would feel it too, sometime, would have to deal with it. The pain.

A gasp, sucked through gritted teeth, her mouth dry and she is blinking, is blinking and taking in the room, the hand on her arm, blood-stained fingers, and she turns to see, turns to find the face that belongs to that hand, and finds creased blue eyes, and a set jaw looking back at her.

Philippe.

Of course, Philippe.

Back around. To Warren and the rope. And they came here for a reason, didn’t they? Someone was hurt (her?) and needed Henry and Henry needs to be careful not to wear himself out, not again, so it must not be too serious if they are going to Henry.

A glimpse of the rope, unravelling from Henry’s wrists.

From Henry’s wrists?

Why was he tied? Who tied him? Did someone try to hurt him? If someone hurt him so help them she’ll make them pay.

And Henry is standing, standing and rubbing his wrists, his face ashen pale and mouth a tight line, blood at the corner of his lips. Warren is saying something, apologising for something, what is he apologising for? Surely he couldn’t know anything about who tried to hurt Henry and why? Why would Warren know about anything like that?

But Henry is shaking his head, lips pursed as if he is tasting something bitter, something awful (blood? Are his lungs bleeding? Why are they standing around if his lungs are bleeding? He needs to be lying down, needs a doctor, needs rest.) Warren’s protests silence, and the first clear words reach Etta’s ears at last, Henry’s voice low and hoarse.

“Get out of my sight.”

Warren stills, rigid a moment, and his hand falls to his side. Then he is turning, is turning and brushing past her but not before she sees how white his face is, the tears in his eyes and before she can begin to figure out what’s happening, he’s gone.

The hand disappears from her arm and she turns, turns to find Philippe still there, looking as if he would say something, but then his face hardens and he nods, and turns, and follows Warren out the door.

She looks back to Henry, who is staring past her to the door, his eyes red-rimmed and he closes them, closes them, his lips twisting and two tears trickle down his cheeks before he draws a shaky breath and opens his eyes again to meet hers.

His hand is cool brushing her wrist.

“I’ll fix you up,” he whispers.

* * *

 

The creaking of the door disturbs Fahim, and it takes a moment for the room to stop swimming. There’s a tightness in his chest, an anxious twisting that makes him sweat. Shadows, and fear races through him. If he could he’d go for the light but the pain sharpens keen at the thought and he hisses, tears springing to his eyes.

The light flickers on, low hum of the gas, and as the room brightens he sees Warren, standing by the door, and the anxiety that was in Fahim’s heart doubles, tightens in his throat.

Warren, pale, looking dazed, blood dark on his hands.

Henry. It must be Henry.

(Please not Henry. Please not Henry.)

“Is it Henry?” The words are out before he can stop them, before he can truly think them. “Is it—” another lance of pain and he gasps, grits his teeth, “a haem—haem—”

Warren’s gaze flicks to him, and he drifts across the room, the words dying in Fahim’s mouth, all the time his heart pounding harder, the air sucked away, and tears spring to his eyes as Warren sinks into the chair by the bed, the light catching the tears trickling down his cheeks, making them sparkle. “No.” His voice is hoarse. “No, he’s fine. He’s—well.” His voice cracks and he bows his head.

The relief that comes over Fahim makes him sink deeper into the bed, but the questions linger. What happened? What happened to leave Warren in such a state? Whose blood is it? And before he can ask, Warren’s head is pressed into his hands and he’s whispering, voice muffled, “I’ve done something awful. Something awful.”

* * *

 

Etta gives him something to focus on, makes him control the trembling in his hands. If he tends to her, focuses, wholly, on her, then he will not have to think about War—about _him_. Will not have to think about the pain throbbing in his chest, the stinging of his wrists, the aching in his legs. Will not have to think about any of it. He just has to think about Etta. Just needs to think about Etta. She is all that matters in the world now.

She is all that he can _allow_ to matter.

He might fake a smile for her, but even he knows when such things are going too far.

It is almost easy, to slip into doctor mode. With gentle hands he guides her to sit in the chair under the light, and tilts her head back to examine the cut on her neck. The blood has mostly dried, but still some oozes out, beading red on her skin in a thin line. Bile rises inside of him, a burning flame of hatred towards the man who did this to her, but he swallows it down, the voice of reason whispering in his head. Violence will not get him anywhere now, not when Buquet is already dead (he must be).

He takes his medical bag, washes his hands in the basin with some of the carbolic solution, and lays one hand steadying on the back of her neck. “This will sting a bit,” he whispers, and she gives him the faintest, barely perceptible nod. With infinite care he swabs the carbolic over the gash, and she hisses through clenched teeth.

Another time, any other time, Henry might say, _I did warn you._ But not now. Now he swallows, and fights the tears prickling his eyes, and whispers, “I’m sorry.” _Sorry for you getting dragged into this mess. Sorry for hurting you more. Sorry for not being able to take the pain away. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…_ “At least there’s not as many as in Deadwood.”

It is a weak effort to take her mind off everything, but she huffs a breath that might almost be a laugh, if it wasn’t for the way she has started to tremble, and he finishes as quickly as he can. The wound is not deep enough to need stitches (thank God for small mercies), but it’s bleeding a little more now again after being cleaned, and he takes a pad of lint from his bag and presses it to it, and wraps her neck (gently, gently) with a bandage, so it looks almost as if she is wearing an old-fashioned cravat.

(Another time, she might comment on it, might say that she is in solidarity with him, but it is beyond him to even attempt to draw such levity out of her.)

He takes the hand mirror and shows it to her, and her lip twitches slightly, eyes welling with tears. Without a second’s hesitation, he sets the mirror down and takes her in his arms. Her tears are damp soaking into his shirt, and pain briefly spears his chest, makes his breath hitch as his own tears come, and trickle into her hair.

“You’ve always been the best of us, Etta,” he whispers. “Always. Whatever happened out there I won’t ask you. It’s in the past now. It’s over. It can’t hurt you or I or any of us now, never again. I promise.” He leans back, and takes a clean handkerchief from his pocket, dabs her tears away, and then lightly, lightly, presses a kiss to her forehead. “None of this is your fault. Not the tiniest bit of it.”

For a moment, he is not certain that she believes him. And he is about to remind her of how she brought a girl to him that she didn’t know, but who had been beaten by a cowhand that Etta fought off and who needed seeing to, when she meets his gaze, and nods. And then her eyes skitter away, and her fingers tighten in his shirt, and she asks, her voice hoarse with tears, with pain, “Will you cut my hair?”

He does not ask what for, does not ask why. It is not his place to. He just nods, and takes her hand and squeezes it. “Whatever you want.”

* * *

 

It’s a lot to take in, that Buquet was the one to ambush him, that it’s because of Buquet that he’s stuck in this damn bed and not with Erik. That Buquet would have killed Warren too, did try to kill Henry and Etta. That Warren and Erik killed Buquet between them. That Warren tied up Henry to keep him out of it and Henry sent him away (and Fahim can understand why Warren did it, so help him he’d do anything too to protect Henry, but to do it after agreeing that Henry could be involved, Henry, the proudest, stubbornnest man Fahim has ever met other than Erik, how could Henry be expected to do anything other than send Warren away?)

The whole thing is a tangle, and it’s more than Fahim can manage in his state to work out.

The door opening again jars him from his thoughts, and he jumps. At the window, leaning against the frame, Warren doesn’t stir. And then Erik is here. Erik, in his own dust-covered clothes, without the ridiculous moustache Etta gave him, without the make-up. Erik is here, his Erik, and Fahim’s heart throbs painfully to see him, all the days and weeks of longing, of missing him, of pain bubbling up inside him, and tears spring to his eyes but he draws a shuddering breath to try and keep them in.

Erik gives him a smile, just a faint twitching of his lips, and then he is crossing the room, is laying a hand on Warren’s shoulder. He leans in and whispers something in his ear, and Warren nods, and leaves, his head bowed and hands (still covered in dried blood) in his pockets.

The door snicks closed behind him.

It is only when they are alone, truly alone, that Erik takes Fahim’s hand, and settles in the chair beside him. The tears in his eyes shine almost as golden as his eyes themselves as he raises Fahim’s hand to his lips, and kisses his knuckles. “I’ll have to run,” he whispers. “For everyone’s sake but especially yours. If anyone suspects I’m here they’ll—”

Fahim nods, draws his hand back down so he can kiss Erik’s knuckles, and tries not to think that only an hour or two ago, these hands helped choke the life out of a man. These hands that he has held and kissed (that have touched him so gently, that have caressed him and held him), these hands killed a man tonight. Have killed many men, but killed someone for him, because his life was threatened. These hands have committed murder in his name, and bile rises hot in Fahim’s throat, a wave of horror overcoming him before his better senses wrestle into the upper hand.

If it were not for Erik, Buquet might try again. Might kill any of them. Might kill him.

He swallows the horror down, and musters a smile. “I understand.”

Erik nods, looking down on their joined hands, his so pale and long-fingered, and Fahim’s darker, wider, and his voice is low. “I’ll ride for Mexico. Then I’ll cross up along the border, and lose myself in El Paso. We’ll meet there you’re strong enough. And put all of this behind us.” He smiles, just slightly, and looks back to Fahim. A tear trickles down his cheek, and with trembling fingers Fahim reaches up and wipes it away. Erik grasps his hand, presses it to his cheek, the smile dropping, eyes hardening. “No one will hurt you ever again, my love. I promise.”

Before Fahim can feel any prickle of discomfort over the dark undercurrent in his voice, those two words hit him, arrest his heart.

_My love._

His love.

Erik called him his love. Erik loves him, and some part of him knew that, has known that all along, deep down, but to hear it said, to hear those words whispered. His heart kicks with a painful beat, and his throat is too tight to speak, too tight as Erik leans in, and kisses him, ever so lightly, on his lips.

A flash of a hand, and there is a ring glinting silver, sitting in Erik’s palm, and then he is slipping it onto Fahim’s ring finger, is closing his hand and squeezing it. “As long you wear this,” he whispers, and a tear trickles down his cheek, “it will be as if I am right beside you, I promise.”

And before Fahim can say anything, can thank him, can begin to grasp for words, Erik lays his hand down, and gives his fingers one last squeeze before he nods, and stands, and disappears out the door in a swirl of his coat.

Fahim sinks back on his pillows, suddenly tired, and heavy, and the gaslight shining gold in the ring is all he can see.

* * *

 

No one sleeps that night. Such an illusion of peace is beyond them. How can they sleep, when there is so very much that is wrong? When they have done things and had things done to them that weigh heavily on their minds? That infiltrate every thought? Any relief that the danger has passed, that their lives and the lives of each other are safe, is overshadowed, lost in the pain, in the aching deep in their chests.

Henry sits in a chair by the window, holding his watch. He has often slept in chairs. Has often found it easier to breathe there than in bed. But tonight he does not even try. Tonight he runs his thumb over smooth silver, and tries not to think of Warren winning it in a game just to give it to him. Tries not to think of Warren tying him up. Tries not to think of Warren or of anything at all even though Warren is the one thing, the only thing, that his heart cries out for. And deep down he wishes that his heart would just stop. That his disease would eat into one of his arteries and cause a haemorrhage that will take him away. Anything, anything other this hollowness, this emptiness. To think that his lover betrayed him. The one man he would give his life to. And he treated him as if he were no better than a beast.

Still his heart cries out for him, cries out to have him, to hold him and kiss him, but he clamps down on it, clamps down on that traitorous heart inside his chest that still insists on keeping him alive and inflicting such pain.

He cannot give in to it now. Not now.

Etta didn’t want to take his bed, but he insisted. The better for him to keep an eye on her in the night, just in case her neck starts bleeding again. And logically she knows this, logically she knows it makes sense for him to give her his bed and keep an eye on her. He is a doctor after all and it’s not as if they haven’t done this before, but she can’t settle, can’t silence her mind and maybe she should have taken the laudanum he offered her (she knows she should have) but if she had she might only have nightmares, might keep waking in the night, sweating and terrified, not knowing where she is, her brain in too much of a fog to make sense of anything. She’d hoped cutting her hair might help. It has in the past, but not tonight. Tonight her skin doesn’t fit right, it itches and begs to be scratched off, to be torn and left in strips, but if she did that it would upset Henry. He’d insist on tending to her and looking after her and that would only makes things worse, and she curls into a ball under the blankets (still so cold, so cold despite their weight), her hands clamped between her thighs, nails digging into her flesh, the closest she can get to letting the twisting tearing desperation out.

Warren would still be wearing blood on his hands if it were not for Philippe De Chagny. Philippe, who was waiting outside of Fahim’s room for him when Erik sent him out. Philippe, who took him to his own room in a different boardinghouse, who cleaned his hands with warm water that he had sent up, and sat and held those hands until they stopped shaking. Philippe, who still wears a smudge of blood under his ear, Etta’s blood that he brushed there. Philippe, who filled two glasses with whiskey and pushed one across the table to him, and who said nothing but who watched him with an unwavering gaze until he took it and drank it. Philippe, who re-filled the glass and kept it topped up. And Warren’s thoughts are all of Henry, all steeped in regret, in a craving to apologize even as he feels righteous over what he did. It was the best way to ensure he couldn’t get killed! If it was Henry who ended up with a knife to his throat or worse he would be wishing that he had done something to keep him out of it. And now that he is safe it isn’t enough, cannot be enough with all that lies between them because of the stupid terrible thing he did. And he swallows down the whiskey and doesn’t care that it burns his throat because any real bodily pain can only be better than the pain drilling into his heart.

Philippe’s thoughts are a mirror, are of Etta. All night, ever since Erik appeared in his room, he’s raged silently at her, over her keeping secrets, over her dragging him into this without telling him, over her using him as if he would not have offered to help if she had simply asked. If she had only said something! But the moment he saw that knife, the trickle of blood down her neck, it’s as if his heart dropped through the floor. It should never have happened. He should have foreseen it, should have stopped it. He was a Colonel! Twenty years an army man, he knows damn well how things go wrong! If he had only had the damn foresight she would never have been hurt!

He would more than understand it if she never wanted to see him again. And as they work into the second bottle, and a single tear trickles golden down Warren’s cheek, Philippe reaches over and takes his hand, and squeezes. A silent affirmation of all that they have each lost this night.

(At the same moment, in a different room in a different building, Henry is setting his pocket watch down, and climbing into bed beside Etta, taking her in his arms to try to ease her trembling, and when his own tears come again, a deeper well than before, he lets them flow and prays, quietly, for relief from the pain.)

And Fahim lies awake in his bed, the tears dried on his cheeks. His heart is full of Erik, out there somewhere even now, so far away, too far away, riding hard for the south though it will take him a week and more to get to Mexico and that’s if he doesn’t wear his horse out, and Erik’s thoughts, in turn, are full of Fahim even as he urges Ayesha on beneath him, riding by the light of the moon, the land bathed silver and his own tears dried in the breeze. It’s far from the first time he’s had to leave a town at speed in the dead of night, but it's the first time his heart aches to return.

Fahim’s thoughts are of Etta and her neck wound (though he hasn’t seen her yet, only heard), of Warren, so hollowed out, of Henry who must be in a terrible state and fighting to hold himself together because he’s Henry, fighting his lungs, fighting everything. All of it, so much of it, everything circling back to Erik, to missing him, to longing for him, and Fahim is full of it, every single thing tearing at him, drowning the pain of his wound with all that he couldn’t help, all that’s happened because he got shot. If it hadn’t been for that, if it hadn’t started there, maybe none of this would have happened.

(It would have happened, sometime, somewhere, in some way, but he has no way of knowing that, and even if he had it would be no consolation on this night.)


	21. The Harrow and the Haunted

“Something has to be done.” Fahim looks up from his letter in time to see Etta drop into the chair beside his bed. It’s been six weeks, but he’s still getting used to her with short dark hair and a moustache. She is not as all right as she would have him think, but her hands are steadier this morning than he’s seen them in some time, so he will be grateful for small victories.

It’s a waste of time asking, _about what?_ There’s only one thing they need to do anything about now.

He sighs, sinking back into his pillows. “What’s he done this time?”

She crosses one leg over the other. “Nothing. At least not yet.” The concession is not confidence-inspiring. “The hangover is keeping him in bed. But he’ll want to go out again later and it’s only by the grace of God that I got him up the stairs last night!” Her fingers beat restlessly against her knee.

Fahim remembers last night. He was dozing, too stiff to go to bed proper, and could hear the voices coming down the hall. Henry, alternating between giggling and sobbing (the topic was, of course, “that goddamn sonofabitch”, in other words, Warren), and Etta, softly soothing him, encouraging him on. She tried to dissuade him from visiting Fahim, but he was lost to reason by then, and stumbled in, still in tears, to hug him and whisper (loudly), “you’re the only man who’s never let me down. The only one.” Etta, eventually, got to steer him back out and to his own room, and put him to bed, but it was a bad night.

“I think the chest pain is at him too.” Her voice is soft, now. “He almost drew on a cowhand for playing ‘Red River Valley’ badly. Smashed a glass.” And Fahim knows as well as she does that Henry only gets so particular about music when the pain is bad. The rest of the time he can bear the faults.

“Did you suggest that he just talk to Warren?” The straightforward approach might be the one to take to try and settle things between them.

Etta shakes her head, and looks at him as if he might be slow, or as if she’s wondering how much laudanum he might still be on. “He’s a Southerner, Fahim. He’s proud. They breed them that way. It’s no use telling him just to talk to Warren. It’d be like suggesting that he talk to a tree.” She shrugs, and lies back in her chair. “Anyway. When Warren walked into the Alhambra last night, Henry upped and left. I had to gather his money and follow him.” She sighs. “I suppose it’s progress though that he didn’t try to shoot at the sky this time.” That was certainly a wild night, and unspoken is the thought that maybe the night Henry spent in the cells was a help. Fahim can hear it in the pause before she goes on. “Besides, I have to go down and bail out Warren soon.”

If it’s not one of them it’s the other. Fahim folds his letter over, deciding he’ll appreciate Erik’s words more later. There’s no use in trying to read it now. “And what did _he_ do this time?”

The face Etta makes suggests that at another time she might almost be amused by it, but not now. Not after everything that’s happened. “He half-killed a drover in a fistfight. Took three men to pull him out and he broke the nose of one of them and banged up the ribs of another. Locking him up for the night was best.” She sighs, her lips twisting. “I haven’t seen him so bad since he was calling himself Taylor and they tried to hang him.”

And not for the first time lately, Fahim agrees that something, definitely, needs to be done.

* * *

 

There was only a brief uproar in the town after the disappearance of Buquet. What caused slightly more of a disturbance was the appearance of Etta with her dyed hair and moustache, calling herself Edwin. And when it became known, several days later (and Fahim suspects Mrs Cummings’ involvement in the news getting out, though it was only a matter of time), that Doctor Henry Russell and Warren Stapp, who had always been so close and even batched together, were no longer on speaking terms, and that Stapp had taken a different room, it became something of a stir.

A stir which Fahim only heard of through Etta, and which he knows she kept hidden from Henry as much as she could. Especially the parts where it was believed that he and Warren’s separation was because of an argument over a woman. And that woman was widely given to be Etta herself.

Henry was still somewhat himself in those early days. Still fastidious over his appearance, still making the effort to be somewhat stoic about what happened.

The very next day after the death of Buquet, when everything was still fresh, he sat in with Fahim, and asked after Erik, if he had gotten to see him after, and when the answer was that Erik had visited him before fleeing town, Henry smiled (a forced smile, but still a smile) and whispered that that was good. His eyes fell to the ring on Fahim’s finger, and one of his eyebrows rose.

“My brother Andrew had a ring like that.” And it was news to Fahim that Henry had a brother other than Charles, but he kept quiet. “Eliza Jane Johnson gave it to him before he went to the war. I always remember it. A plain silver ring, promising that she would be waiting for him.” He stopped, but Fahim could sense there was more to come, and he had a terrible feeling deep in his stomach, a twisting nausea that he knew how the story would turn out.

Henry’s voice was hushed when he continued. “A few months later he was killed,” and his faint smile was wry. “We never had great luck with chests in my family.”

There were tears shining in his eyes, and Fahim didn’t know what to say. What do you say to your friend when you hear about his brother that died almost twenty years ago? On the losing side in a war that you didn’t fight in? But Henry made it easier for him so he didn’t have to say anything. He wiped the tears from his eyes, and his voice was hoarse. “Erik will be waiting for you in El Paso. I know he will. And if he lets himself get caught between now and then, so help me God, I’ll go out and free him myself.” And with a nod, and a squeeze of Fahim’s hand, he was gone.

Two days later he was planning to ride for Austin, “just to get away.” He was drunk at the time, and Etta apprehended him before he could do something as ridiculous as ride out in the middle of the night. That was the first of the many nights since that he spent in the saloons, drinking and gambling until he broke down, Etta the shadow that carted him home again and put him to bed.

The morning after, when he came to Fahim, he was planning to go back to Virginia. “There’s nothing left for me out here.” His voice was hoarse with the pain of what Warren did to him and the whiskey, and Fahim managed to push himself into a sitting position (even though his head swam) so he could better look Henry in the eye.

“And what about your health? That was the whole reason you came out here wasn’t it?”

Henry looked away, to some point on the other wall, but he stayed silent, a tear shining in the corner of his eye.

“And what about your friends?” Fahim pressed. “Do you not think your sudden leaving would hurt them?”

It was a low blow, one of the lowest he could deliver, and Henry still didn’t answer, but the tear trickled free from his eye, and another and another, and then he was weeping, and Fahim took him in his arms, and guided his head down to lay it on his shoulder, and held him, just held him and stroked his hair as he cried.

There were plenty of tears, still, after that. But there was no more talk of leaving.

* * *

 

It has been the whole of six weeks since Erik left. But those six weeks have not been devoid of word from him. There have been telegrams, several of them, each of them signed E. Espinosa, though Fahim doubts if Espinosa is his actual surname, especially since all of the sources have always agreed that his name is French and begins with a D. But each of those telegrams is a blessing, saying little, simply affirming that he is alive, and well, and making his way through several border towns. One of them is a scrap of poetry (WHERE YOUTH GROWS PALE AND SPECTRE THIN AND DIES STOP) and Henry cocks his brow at it, and mutters that he’s “not certain it’s appropriate to quote Keats.” Another is a line from a song best sung drunkenly that Fahim has heard many many times, usually when manhandling drunks into the cells to cool off (AND THATS ANOTHER REASON WHY I LEFT OLD SKIBBEREEN STOP). And another is simply a line in Latin that he has to get Henry to translate (SINE AMORE NIHIL EST VITA STOP; without love, life is empty) and Henry passed the telegram back to him and excused himself. Fahim cursed his own foolishness for asking him to read it, but he has no one else to turn to to translate Latin.

There was a letter from Laredo, written in a spidery elegant hand. Fahim didn’t know how to expect Erik’s writing to be, but spidery elegance did not cross his mind and when he opened it first he spent more time tracing the letters with his fingertips than reading it. The letter said that all was well, and swore to be careful on the rest of the journey to El Paso, and whispered of love at the end. Fahim couldn’t read it through the tears his eyes and the lump catching in his throat. He just pressed it to his chest and cried.

And a second letter came this morning, from El Paso. The letter that Etta interrupted the reading of, and he has not returned to it yet, has decided to wait. He will have his daily visit from Warren first, in which Warren will say little and he will say less, and they will each pointedly not mention Henry, and then Warren will help him from bed so he can dress. The wound still aches, is still damn stiff, but it is good to be up and about a little bit, even if he needs a cane and has not dared risk the stairs.

Some battles can wait for a better time.

Henry and Warren’s separation, on the other hand, has gone on long enough.

If he could just figure out how to get them together again.

* * *

 

He lets that day pass, and when night comes he detains Henry with a game of poker to keep him from going out. It’s not real poker. It doesn’t have much in the way of stakes or technique and neither of them is playing too hard to win, but it is enough to keep Henry out of trouble, even if he still drinks more than is probably good for him.

And refuses to let Fahim drink more than a mouthful or two.

“Tea is much better in your condition than whiskey,” he reasons, eyeing him over the tops of his cards. Beside him Etta makes a face, and it is on the tip of Fahim’s tongue to say “perhaps you ought to take your own advice” but he restrains the impulse. Considering all he’s going through, Henry’s allowed to be a bit…how he is.

Instead of using money, they use toothpicks and stories. Amongst several others, Fahim has to tell how he met Etta. Or rather, the night he hid her in the cells after she stabbed a man to death for his involvement in the death of a whore. When she had calmed down and her hands had stopped shaking (and the crowd had dispersed), he leaned in and discreetly told her that if he left her cell unlocked and she skipped town in under an hour then he wouldn’t send anyone after her.

She was gone in fifteen minutes.

And the Etta before him smiles over it now as she plays with her little stack of toothpicks, and Henry giggles because he’s already well-gone and hasn’t heard the story too many times before.

Fahim hasn’t gotten to read the letter from Erik yet, and it is Henry who asks after it. They do not mention Warren, or De Chagny. And Fahim knows that Etta hasn’t seen him since that night, though he hasn’t dared to ask her about it. She’ll tell him in her own good time, when she’s ready. His prying might only do more harm than good.

They retire early for the night, and long after the other two have left, Fahim lies awake in the darkness, thinking about Henry and Warren, and Etta and De Chagny, and Erik in El Paso. The stack of telegrams and letters are in the drawer of the bedstand, under the Deputy badge that he will turn in in the morning when the Marshal comes to visit, and he might reach for them, might ease them out, study the words, hold the paper that Erik held in a desperate effort to be closer to him, but he kisses his ring instead, and prays that somehow, Erik might know he is thinking of him.

(And he does not realise, because how could he?, that at very moment in El Paso, Erik is sitting over another blank sheet of paper, trying to write a letter, and thinking, wholly, of him.)


	22. No Future in the Past

“You’ll regret it,” Fahim keeps his voice level, his gaze firmly focused on Warren’s eyes, “if you don’t spunk up and talk to him.” It’s the first time he’s drawn up what happened, the first time he’s even referred to Henry in Warren’s presence. And he sips his tea to punctuate the point, and silently dares Warren to answer.

The force of his gaze is too much. Warren’s eyes slip from him to the window, through which he can only see a patch of sky from where he’s sitting, and a glimmer of a tear shines bright in the corner of one of his eyes for only the barest second before it’s blinked away. “He doesn’t want me to see him. He avoids me every chance he gets.” His voice is low, steady, but that steadiness is belied by the tapping of his fingers on his knee.

“If you don’t try you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life.” And it’s on the tip of Fahim’s tongue to add, but he refrains because it would be too low of a blow, _your life will be an awful lot longer than his_. “How long, do you think? Two years? Three?” Even asking that is almost a step too far, and if Warren could hear the pounding of his heart, he would know that his nonchalance is wholly feigned.

Any colour that Warren had left drains from his cheeks and he grimaces. The silence drags on, broken only by him sipping his whiskey, and Fahim is keenly aware of his watch, ticking in his pocket, as if he can hear it from under his clothes. _Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock._ Tick tock tock tock away the time that Warren and Henry have left.

“I don’t want to think about it.” Warren’s voice is soft when it comes, and Fahim’s eyes flicker back to him. It’s all very well and good, Warren not wanting to think about it, about the inevitability of it. But he _has_ to think about it, he must. And surely he has, before, but it’s critical that he think about it now. They can’t afford to waste time, to waste the months and years that Henry has and if Warren doesn’t want to think about it now, when his own actions have forced them apart, how can he hope to face it at any time?

No. He has to think about it. A terrible, awful truth it may be (and Fahim himself doesn’t much want to face it), but it’s the only way.

And that’s what Warren needs to hear.

Fahim takes his hand, Warren jumping at the unexpected contact, and musters all the strength he has to keep his voice steady. “You have to think about it. You love him. And he loves you. I know he does. But your time is short. _His_ time is short. And you would waste it like this, the two of you in misery? Instead of facing him, and telling him? He loves you. He’s angry, yes. And upset.” _And completely, terribly, miserable,_ but better not to add that. “But he loves you.”

But Warren is shaking his head, shaking his head and biting his lip and he lets go of Fahim’s fingers. “You don’t know that.” His voice is hoarse. “You don’t. What I did—”

“What you did was to protect him.” There. It’s a concession. The truth, but a concession. “It was the wrong way to do it. You should have talked to him. You could have found a way to keep him safe without doing what you did. If you had only talked to him, you wouldn’t be in this mess.” This conversation has been more words than Fahim’s said in weeks, since before he was wounded, since—since—he can’t really remember since when. A long time, and every effort leaves him faintly breathless, his heart fluttering in his chest. He sips his tea, closes his eyes a moment to try to get to grips, and opens them again to the sight of Warren looking strained. He waves off his concern, takes another sip of his tea, and nods. “Time’s too short for you to not patch things up as soon as possible.”

Warren looks faintly nauseous, and his voice is small when he whispers, “if he’s happy without me, then I’m happy.”

The crack of Fahim’s hand slapping him across the cheek catches them both off-guard.

Warren’s gaze snaps back to him, his hand pressed to his reddened cheek, and pure vindictive pleasure burns in Fahim’s stomach. A slap is the least of what he deserves for the way he’s behaved! Nevermind this nonsense that Henry might be happy without him. Has he not seen Henry at any time in the last few weeks! The drinking, the gambling, the hysteria, the shooting at the sky! None of it is any sign of _happiness_!

It makes Fahim’s blood boil.

“He is _not_ happy without you. He is utterly miserable, and it is in no small part because you don’t have the guts to go to him. Go to him and face him and hear from him how he feels and what he wants you to do. But stop being such a goddamn martyr, Warren! You’re not helping anyone, least of all him.”

Silence when he finishes, his wound aching, his words echoing in his head. Warren’s face is blank, his eyes wide, and he is so still it is as if he is not breathing at all. The silence stretches, on and on, and Fahim is just thinking that maybe he wasn’t forceful enough, maybe he should say something more, maybe he should throttle Warren and have done with it for being such a fool, when finally, finally, Warren nods.

“All right.” He knocks back the remainder of his whiskey, sets the glass down, his hand shaking. “All right.”

And as he reaches for the bottle again, and Fahim considers pulling it away from him, the door swings open.

Etta is framed there, her suit rumpled, her hat in her hand and hair tousled, face pale. “Good you’re both here. Henry’s collapsed. The doctor’s with him.” The words come in a rush, take a moment for Fahim to grasp, but even before the words are fully out, Warren is on his feet, whirling around to face her.

“What happened? Was his chest sore? Was he coughing? Was there blood?” He rattles the questions off, running a hand through his hair, and as if she had anticipated them, Etta is already shaking her head before he’s finished.

“No, no. None of that. He just fainted. His fever’s up, but he’s already awake again.”

Fahim’s heart pounds with relief, and he sighs, his knuckles aching as he unclenches them. Thanks be to Allah that it was nothing more serious than a faint.

Warren slumps, leans heavy against the wall. “Thank God.” And even from behind him, Fahim can see when he raises his hand to his face, and knows that he is wiping away tears.

* * *

 

The doctor leaves, with his usual admonishments for Henry to rest more and drink less, and _perhaps curtail your nightlife_. Henry himself is the one to relay the news to Etta and Fahim with a wry smile when they arrive in to see him after the doctor’s departure. He’s propped up in bed, a pillow at his back and a book open in his lap, but despite the attempt at normalcy he doesn’t look well at all. He’s haggard in his shirtsleeves, his face unshaven and skin faintly grey, bags under his eyes. The bright noonday light coming in the window only makes look more ill, and Fahim almost regrets convincing Warren to come and visit him, almost decides to go back out and tell Warren to wait, if only a day, for Henry to regain some of his colour, but Henry musters a smile for them after dismissing the doctor’s remarks with a wave of his hand, and the regret vanishes.

Besides, it’s for the best that he and Warren get over themselves as soon as possible. For everyone’s sakes.

“How do you feel?” Etta asks, settling on the edge of the bed. Fahim would sit, too, but he doesn’t trust himself to be able to get up any time soon and he leans heavy on his cane, wincing when his wound protests.

Henry’s smile is lopsided, and at another time he might berate Etta for asking, but not now. “Tired. Still a bit lightheaded, but it’s nothing I haven’t been through before.” The sweat is beading on his forehead, and Etta frowns, then stands and goes to the window, and cracks it open to let in some air.

Fahim fumbles for something to say, some way to break the silence, but the words all feel inadequate on his tongue, the only clear sentence forming itself being one about Warren, and he resigns himself. Better to tell Henry now than to wait any longer, and Fahim sucks in a steadying breath, flexes his fingers to try and ease some of the tension.

“Warren wants to see you.” He keeps his voice soft, the sentence to the point and his face carefully schooled to blankness, and watches for the moment that his words register with Henry.

Henry’s fingers smooth over his book, and he swallows.

The far side of the bed, Etta’s lips tighten, and Fahim thinks it might be all lost, that maybe it’s too soon, that Henry might refuse to see him, and he’s just about to tell Henry to forget about it, to leave it, and go back out and tell Warren that he’ll have to wait, when Henry nods, ever so slightly, and closes the book.

“I think I will shave first.” The words are flat, hollow and emotionless, but they are an acceptance, implicit in their simplicity.

Fahim nods.

* * *

 

They keep the door open a tiny crack after Warren goes in, just enough that they can hear snatches of what’s being said inside. Fahim leans against the wall for support, his head craned forward to hear better, and Etta crouches, peeping in the gap. He gets the impression she’s done this sort of thing before, and wonders, briefly, if she might have been outside some of the times Erik came to visit him, but he shakes the thought away. It hardly matters now. 

He almost feels guilty for listening, guilty for eavesdropping on something as intimately private as this, his two dear friends patching up their relationship. But he needs to know how things are going on, needs to be ready to step in in case something goes wrong, in case they need someone to intervene.

And it is oddly satisfying, to be able to hear that things are going well. To be able to hear that they are going better, even, than he expected they would.

Besides, it’s more excitement than he’s had in weeks. And he’s infinitely more invested in this than he was the last time Henry dragged them all to see a play that was passing through.

Even without being able to see what is happening, Fahim is more than able to tell their voices apart, and that is enough for him.

Warren is still hoarse with contrition, with worry and apology and concern, and the whisky that he drank when Fahim was having words with him. “...stay away forever if I thought you wanted me to...” _Oh not more of that nonsense. They don’t need more of that now._

And Henry is hoarse too, hoarse with his illness, hoarse with his drinking and his tears, his drawl roughened. “...never want that...” _Good. That’s exactly what I told him. Knock the idea out of his head._

“...just want you happy…” The same thing he said earlier to Fahim, and Fahim told him what a fool he was, and now Henry shushes him, cuts over him, because it’s obvious to anyone, obvious to the world, that he could not be happy without Warren, and the feeling of satisfaction in Fahim’s heart deepens.

“...need you...presumption of strength...assume I can manage when I want…be there to lean on not…”

“...don’t want...getting hurt...”

“...know but...need you to believe I can...”

And Warren murmurs something, something soft that Fahim can’t hear, and then there are muffled sounds, soft, and Etta turns from the keyhole to look up at Fahim and smile, and nod. The relief that comes over him is almost overwhelming, and his legs are weak as he leans heavier on his cane, grateful to the wall for support. Etta pushes herself to her feet, and eases the door closed, and as she turns to face him, he lays a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

They’ve succeeded with Henry and Warren. Now there’s one last piece of crucial business to attend to today, and he smiles kindly at her, and nods, and tells her what he suspects deep down she needs to hear. “Now you need to face De Chagny.”

* * *

 

Fahim is right, of course. She’s put this off too long. She should have gone to see Philippe the morning after everything with Buquet, when it was still fresh and her betrayal of him was new, instead of leaving it all of these weeks. But she was giving him time (so she told herself), and space, giving him the chance to come to her, if he wanted. And in those early days, going to him was the furthest thing from her mind anyway, when her skin still felt as if it did not belong to her, when she ached to tear it all off, when she was adjusting to her shorter hair and the smarting pain in her neck from the knife.

(And she will not admit it, not to Fahim, not to herself, not to anyone, that she is afraid to face him. Afraid to hear what he will say about her for what she did, for leading him into danger. Afraid to hear what he might think of her, of her as Edwin, of her in general. He might deride her, might hate her, might tell her that he never wants to see her again and her skin crawls at the idea, crawls that he might not want her anymore and the terror that he might send her away makes her stomach churn.)

It’s so long since she’s been to the other boardinghouse. So long, and she’s not certain if she knows the way in daylight, not certain if she’ll remember (if she wants to remember), but her feet carry her on, and on, and on, and the buildings are familiar, the walls, the gaudy paper inside, sickly yellow and red (how could he live in a place like this? It’s a punishment for the hungover), and she is up the stairs (it must be hell for him with his hip, climbing these stairs day and night), is standing in front of his door.

Is knocking on his door.

He might not be in (please God, let him not be in). He might be out, might be gambling, might be meeting with someone, with his brother!, might be busy. How does she know he’s in? It’s arrogant of her to assume he is. She should have checked first, should have asked someone, should have searched the saloons, should have—

The door opens. The door opens, and there he is. There he is, all his golden hair turning grey, the lines edged around his eyes, his lips quirked, and her heart falters, heart falters to meet his gaze (she’s still wearing the moustache, he hasn’t seen her since she dyed her hair, he might not recognise her, please don’t—please let him recognise her), and she swallows, and tilts her head, hand on her hip, feigning nonchalance even as her heart pounds inside of her chest.

“May I come in?”


	23. Riverswim

Philippe’s breaths are soft in her hair and she hangs on them, feels them deep in her bones, each inhale a blessing, each exhale a murmur of forgiveness. For lying to him, for threatening him, for drawing him into danger. “I might well have done the same thing,” he whispered, lips twisting in a wry smile, after her apology, before their kiss. She almost broke down, then and there, almost broke down and made a fool of herself. Forgiveness is not something she is used to being granted, not something she is ever _usually_ granted except from a close few (the list is so short it doesn’t take all the fingers on one hand), and to get it, like this, off him (off _him_ ), after having only asked—

Her breath falters.

_I like all this,_ he whispered, gesturing to her, her men’s clothes, her bound breasts, her short hair, darkened from auburn to mahogany, the moustache she made from clippings of her own hair, just to complete the picture. He traced his thumb over that moustache with a slight smile, and to think that he likes that too made her eyes water (and fresh tears prickle them again). He wiped away the tears, a faint glisten of dampness in his own eyes as he squeezed her hand and leaned in, and at her slight nod he kissed her, ever so lightly, on the lips. _I’ll get used to the feeling of it._

_I’ll get used to it._

No other man has ever—has ever even wanted to try. And women have only counted it as one of her quirks, have cast it off as something to giggle over, to make a joke at, but Philippe—

Philippe.

She will not cry. She is more than that. She will _not_.

He sighs now and shifts, props himself on his elbow to look down on her. The movement of the bed draws her from her thoughts and she instantly misses his warmth, wriggles deeper beneath the sheets to find the heat in the space he left. His touch is gentle as he takes her hand, and squeezes it, and does not smile.

“I have a ranch in Arizona.” The words are—are absolutely _not_ anything she might ever have expected him to say (frankly she’s not certain what she _did_ expect him to say), and certainly not in this moment, and she frowns up at him for being so damn cryptic at a time like this.

“What has that got to do with this?” And with her free hand she gestures to them, to their decided nudity beneath the sheets, and wishes there were some way to show him other than beating him over the head that she is quite ready to get back to the task at hand, quite ready to press herself against him again in this interlude in their activities.

And he wants to talk about a _ranch_?

He smiles, blue eyes crinkling at the edges. “I have a ranch in Arizona, and I have never been there.” Damn but the man is _absolutely infuriating_ and if she were not so relieved that he’s forgiven her after all she’s done, she might seriously consider choking him. Or at least slapping him and wiping that beautiful smile off his face. “I won it in a poker game when I was stationed in Kansas,” he goes on, as if he is oblivious to her growing frustration. “My _esteemed opponent_ ,” and the sarcasm drips from his words, “had gotten into an unfortunate situation with another man’s wife, and needed money to pay off his debts. We came to an arrangement, and I’ve always managed the place from afar. But,” and his voice is softer now, his fingers light tracing her cheek, slipping down (slowly, slowly) along her throat, coming to rest light on her collarbone, her skin tingling in their wake, “but I’ve been thinking, lately, that the time is right. For me to—to go out there and settle down. Turn it into a home. Raoul has—he has never been the way I was. In a year or two he will tire of the cavalry, of the mess of it all, and I would like there to be a place for him.” He stops, and his gaze drifts away, down to his hand on her chest, and she can only wait, her breath in her throat, for him to carry on.

And when he does, his voice is softer than she has ever heard it. “You’d be welcome in Arizona. Any time.” He draws a stuttering breath. “But I—I understand if you would not. If—if there are other things that would be more to your taste.”

Tears spring fresh to her eyes, and for a long minute she cannot answer, cannot even begin to consider what she can say. Any other man might leave her without a word. Any other man might propose marriage, and she would have to turn him down, would have to thank him politely for the offer and refuse it. But Philippe—Philippe—for the first time, it dawns on her that he understands. He understands her restlessness, her craving to roam. He will not try to tie her down, and her throat is tight as she smiles, and cups his cheek. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

He nods. “Good. Good.” And his gaze comes back to hers, his lips light brushing her knuckles. “I just needed you to know.”

* * *

 

It is good to be back in Warren’s arms. It is more than good, it is excellent. It is brilliant. It is the best feeling in the world, to be back here, to have him back. Henry’s heart was too full of aching, every breath too much of an effort, for him to imagine how good it would feel to press himself close, to feel the heat of Warren through his clothes, to nuzzle into his chest (listen to his heartbeat, try to match his breathing, sink into the familiar calluses of his hand, softly cupping the back of his head). They’ve never separated like that before (they’ve never had to) and every second of it was a pain drilling into his heart, worse than his disease, worse than anything he’s ever known (except, perhaps, the pain during the war, two older brothers away and then word that one of them had been killed, but he was only a boy then and it was hollowness more than pain, numb disbelief more than a constant gnawing that he couldn’t drown out however he tried).

He never knew before how unsteadying, how emptying, relief can be.

But he has Warren back. And they still have things to talk about, problems to discuss and work out, but Warren has promised him the presumption of strength when it comes to his own decisions, to not take his choices from him, to let him at least have the façade of being a well man, and tonight, in these moments, with these promises, having him in his arms again is all that matters, and with soft kisses being pressed to his forehead, it is easy for his thoughts to drift, down routes that he has neglected.

He’s always been defensive of the South. It’s in his nature, in his blood. It’s everything he’s ever known. But he never imagined he could grow to hate somewhere as much as he hates Texas now. Texas has given them nothing, nothing except trying to tear he and Warren apart, and someone trying to kill Fahim, and Etta getting hurt, and his lungs feeling as if they’re going to fight him at every move, as if even one good breath will make them try to give out. Texas has been nothing but bad news, nothing but pain and more suffering. The only good thing that has come out of being here is Fahim finding Erik, who he can’t even be with now.

The sooner they get out, the better.

“I think we should try Las Vegas.” The words are out before he truly realises them, murmured into Warren’s shirt. Las Vegas, New Mexico. A dry climate, warm springs. How many months has Warren been asking him to go to Las Vegas? More than he would like to admit to, and he kept putting it off, finding excuses, reasons to avoid it as if by avoiding going there he could somehow deny his own condition. And then Fahim was wounded and everything snowballed from there, pulling them apart. If they had gone when Warren first suggested it—

If they had gone when Warren first suggested it, Fahim might be dead now.

The thought makes him shiver, and Warren’s arms tighten around him, as if he knows what he’s thinking, as if he might say,  _don’t dwell on it. It’s all worked out in the end._

All worked out. It has, hasn’t it?

“Whenever you think we should go, we’ll go.” Warren’s voice is soft, a promise, and a blessing, and Henry sighs, his heart lighter than before as if some terrible weight has been lifted from him that he never even realised he was carrying.

“When Fahim is strong enough. I don’t want him traveling to El Paso alone.” It is the most logical thing, for them to all go together, and besides, Henry would never forgive himself if Fahim travelled alone and something happened to him, especially with his wound still so recent. And they need to get to El Paso anyway before they can move on for Las Vegas. It only makes sense to wait.

And Warren nods, and plants another kiss at the edge of Henry’s hairline. “When Fahim is ready.”

* * *

 

The whiskey is sharp on his tongue, burns his throat as he swallows. It is so long since he’s drunk more than a sip or two that he has to acquire the taste for it again, but tonight is an exception. Tonight Fahim’s heart is light, because Henry and Warren are back as they should be, and Etta has gone to De Chagny and not returned to shout at him, which can only be a good sign for her, too. So he sits by the window of his room, watching the late night bustling in the street below, and toasts his friends in their absence, and their happiness.

And toasts Erik, his telegrams and letters laid in his lap, the beautiful handwriting that he never imagined he might see. He’s finally read the second letter, finally gotten to savour it and the news that it brings. That Erik is well, and waiting for him, and loves him. That he is trying to go straight, and has taken a small room, and acquired a job dealing faro to try and build a stake for when Fahim gets there. That he cannot wait for Fahim to arrive and the things they will do. That he is ready to cross into Mexico at a moment’s notice if he needs to. That he hopes Fahim is keeping well and looking after himself and taking it easy, and doing everything that the doctor “and your friend Henry” tells him to. Each word is a gift. Each word settles in Fahim’s heart and makes him smile. And maybe it is the effect of getting to read those words, maybe it is the knowledge that Erik loves him, maybe it is the fact that for once in his life there is someone waiting for him, or maybe it is simply because he is unused to drinking whiskey after his injury and his convalescence, but he has to stop to wipe tears out of his eyes.

He is not ready to go to Erik yet. He knows that even without Henry confirming it and there is no point in asking. His wound is still too delicate, too tender, his stamina still insufficient, to dare consider undertaking such a journey. But soon he will be ready. Soon, in a month, or perhaps two, he can cross the state to El Paso, to Erik’s arms. The sooner he rebuilds his strength, the faster it will come (and he resolves to attempt the stairs tomorrow, just to know if he can manage them). And he sips his whiskey, and traces his fingers over the signature on the letter, and kisses the silver ring on his finger, and peace flows through him tonight, peace, and love, and satisfaction, and happiness.

And more tingling excitement than he has ever felt since he was a child.


	24. Call It Dreaming

It is mid-October when they set out, when Fahim is deemed fit enough to manage the journey, and it is the first time he is able to truly breathe since he parted from Erik, the first time his lungs are able to truly expand, their looseness eased by the promise of who awaits him at the end of this trail.

Warren is the one who makes the arrangements. He buys a light wagon with a canvas roof, buys two good horses to pull it, safely stores away the rest of the money he and Henry have made gambling since Buquet’s demise, since their reconciliation (and it is a good amount, both of them having hit lucky streaks shortly after they fixed things up between them). Henry handles the packing for the both of them, and Fahim takes care of his own things, too relieved to be finally setting out to even notice the stiff pain when he bends over. And while Henry thanks Mrs Cummings for being so good to them all, Fahim pays her extra for having caused her such trouble, and promises that if he’s ever out this way again, then he’ll call on her.

She looks as if she would dearly love to say something, but holds her tongue and tells him, instead, that it is no trouble taking care of such fine gentlemen as him.

The blush that burns in Fahim’s cheeks makes him feel like a schoolboy.

Etta declines the invitation to join them on their journey, but she also decides not to go to Arizona, at least not yet. Instead her sights are set towards the north, set on Kansas, with the question on her mind of whether or not Sorelli might be still in Dodge. Perhaps she has moved on, has found greener pastures, in Colorado or in Cheyenne or even, maybe, in Arizona or California. But the best place to start looking for her is Dodge, where she was last known to be, and someone is bound to have some idea of where she went from there.

Besides Philippe, Sorelli is the only one she is able to think of, now. The memories of their brief time together (a year ago, perhaps a shade more) come to her all at once at the end of September, a sudden heady rush reminding her of the fun they had, the tenderness (the lovemaking, so much better than Carlotta who thankfully has not come looking for her). She is possessed with the desperation to see that woman again, to hold her and kiss her and feel the softness of her body pressed close, and even as she lies with Philippe, the night before she departs, it is Sorelli on her mind.

They take their leave at the same time, Etta helping to carry Fahim’s things to the wagon so he does not aggravate his wound which still likes to protest though it is better healed than even Henry had hoped for. She is the one who hitches Darius, and Warren’s horse, Deputy, to the back of the wagon while Warren hitches the two who will pull them. And she hugs Henry, and kisses his cheek, and hugs Fahim and whispers for him to keep out of trouble, and hugs Warren and says she knows he’ll look after the other two.

She hugs Philippe last, and the kiss they share is chaste. Then he squeezes her hand and whispers for her to remember Arizona. She nods, and mounts old Paint, and rides out before he can see the tears in her eyes, unaware that he can barely see her through the tears in his.

He thumbs away his tears as she fades into the distance, and combs a hand through his hair, taking a deep breath to steady himself before Raoul finds him. He will meet her again someday. He knows that, feels it deep in his blood, and it is not his right to lay a claim on someone as wild, someone who lives to roam the way she does. He knows that too, though some part of him wishes he didn’t, wishes she would come to Arizona with him. But it is not in his power to make such wishes come through, and as he settles his hat back on, and leans heavy on his cane, he decides that it may be the best this way, with the promise of someday.

But damn he’s going to miss her.

* * *

 

It is a five-hundred-mile journey from Fort Griffin to El Paso. Five hundred miles. And once upon a time, Fahim would cross that five hundred miles in a week or less, Darius beneath him and the sky above and the wind whistling through his ears. Now it takes more than two weeks, two weeks of being bounced in a wagon with Henry, Warren steering the team. His wound hurts worse than ever, aggravated with the constant jarring, the muscles in his stomach all tightening, pulling on it. Henry insists he take laudanum, insists he sleep as much as he can, and though Fahim knows he’s right, knows he still needs rest, he’s too happy to be out on the road, too happy to be getting closer and closer to Erik by the minute, to care.

He only sips a little of the laudanum, just enough to get some relief, and sleeps each night in the wagon, safe beneath the canvas roof, and dreams that it is Erik beside him like before, even as he and Henry and Warren are all pressed together for heat.

It is still well within his capabilities to dream.

They’ve been travelling a week when he insists on spending a few hours on Darius, reasoning to himself that the pain might be less severe on horseback, and reasoning to Henry that he needs to re-build his strength. And Henry is less than understanding, purses his lips and frowns, but in the end (and Fahim does not miss the way Warren arches his brows at him) relents, with the proviso that Fahim stop riding the moment Henry thinks it’s getting to be too much for him. It is not an agreement that Fahim is particularly fond of, and he has sudden sharp sympathy for Henry, with Warren’s efforts to keep him safe, and has to fight the urge to smile at the face that Warren makes as he hitches the team.

He has always found that it’s easier to think on horseback. Something about the movement of the animal beneath him, the soft undulations of Darius’ back, the gentle rhythm of it, clear any blockage in his mind, let his thoughts flow like water. As he rides he remembers, remembers setting out from Fort Griffin all those months ago with Henry and Warren and Pete Fisher in pursuit of the notorious Erik. Remembers how Pete had to go back because of the snakebite that killed his horse. Remembers Henry getting thrown, the horror on Warren’s face in the split moment before he threw himself off his horse and ran to his side, remembers the shining red of the blood that Henry coughed up, his own nausea at the sight and even as Henry coughed he tried to assure them that it was only torn adhesions and nothing more, nothing serious, Warren taking Henry back to a shack they’d passed only a few hours earlier, so he could rest up before they went back to town, and Fahim himself deciding to continue on alone despite their best efforts to persuade him otherwise.

He remembers finding Erik in that broken-down town. Cold-cocking him and hauling him still bleeding to his horse. Erik riding with bound hands, dried blood flaky and dark covering the side of his face, his nonsense ramblings (and there is a terrible check at Fahim’s heart, now, in hindsight, to think of the condition he left Erik in then, to remember how briefly and terribly ill he was that first night, to remember cleaning his face and his lips with water from the stream and wondering if he might have inadvertently killed his fugitive, and there is terrible clawing guilt tight in his chest but they have not spoken of that, and if Erik remembers he has not given any sign.) The way Erik looked at him with suddenly clear eyes over the campfire as he asked what he’d done this time, and his quiet nod at how he would likely be hanged. The rainstorm. The bottle of whiskey Henry had left in Fahim’s saddlebags. The taste of it off Erik’s lips.

Erik’s body pressed close to his.

Erik’s fingertips, the delicious shiver as they traced over Fahim’s skin though his hands were still bound. Their forbidden, illicit intimacy beneath the stars, how Erik felt beneath him.

(And the night he remembers that, Fahim gets all hot and uncomfortable and has to slip away from the others to gain some relief. When he comes back, only half-sated, the aching in his heart for Erik deeper than ever, he is certain that there is a faint smile on Henry’s face even as he sleeps, and though Warren’s eyes are closed he makes a sound that might almost be a laugh.)

And he remembers more, the rest. His own indecision on what to do with Erik. Cutting his bonds. The one night they spent as if they were each free men, and then leaving Erik to ride into town and settle his affairs. And if he had done as he had planned, had left the next morning and not listened to Erik’s reasonable suggestion that he stay a few days, he would never have been shot. He would never have been shot, and he and Erik would have been reunited months ago. Henry and Warren would be well settled in Las Vegas by now, Henry’s lungs probably improving, and none of what did happen would have happened.

But there is no use in dwelling on what ifs. The fact of the matter is that Henry got to the bottom of his relationship with Erik, and the next night as he walked home Buquet shot him. His memory of it is hazy, and he remembers the stars overhead best of all, the brief heartbeat when he thought Erik was with him. He could have died, he _would_ have died, if it were not for Henry. And it would all be over. And Erik would not be safe in El Paso now, but very likely would have done something reckless and gotten himself hanged.

_What ifs, Fahim. Don’t think about what ifs._

But no. He lived. He is alive. And Erik came to him, in his dreams and in reality, and his words were soft and his kisses were light. Etta found the two of them together, and her hands were steady holding both pistols, her face set and eyes hard and he knows she would have shot without a moment’s hesitation if he had not called out and stopped her, and he could not have blamed her, not really. But the moment she heard what Erik is to him, that hardness melted from her and she offered her hand, and if Fahim’s heart were not already Erik’s he might have fallen a little in love with her, and she has always been dear to him, always been like the little sister he never had, but that night she became even dearer.

Even now he is not clear on all the details, only that Buquet tried to killed Henry too, but he has decided that he would rather not know. Thinking of his friends in such grave danger, and it in some part being because of him—no, it is more than he can bear. So he tries not to think of it, even as he reflects, but the discomfort lingers in him, that Erik killed Buquet and it was for him, because of him. Because of him Erik has another murder to his name and even if no one ever makes the connection, it’s still there nonetheless.

And the thought grips Fahim’s mind. He ruminates on it as he rides. Because of him Erik killed a man. Because of him Erik took a life, and yes that man would have killed him, would have killed him and Erik and Henry and Warren and Etta if he had been given a chance, all because of his fake story that Erik escaped, but does the fact that Buquet would have committed five murders and did attempt three excuse the fact that Erik killed him?

It sits awkwardly in his mind, weighs wrong on him, and when Henry tries to pry at what’s troubling him, he keeps tight-lipped and shakes his head, unable to speak of it.

After all, Warren helped to killed Buquet too, and Fahim isn’t certain how much of that Henry knows, but it is not his place to tell.

The answer comes to him, late one night on the edge of sleep. Yes, Erik killed Buquet. Yes, Buquet would have killed them all. But he, Fahim, would have killed Erik before they became what they are to each other if he had had to, and it would simply have been discharging his duty. He’s been on posses. He’s helped to string up men on the gallows. Is that any different just because it’s done in the name of justice? He served in the last eighteen months of the war. And in the chaos of the battlefield it is difficult to always tell, but he knows there are at least three deaths to his name already and possibly more, three lives that he himself snuffed out, and is that any different just because it was done in the name of war?

Of all of his friends, only Henry is the one without a killing of some sort to his name. Warren can never return to the Dakota country. Etta has left a string of dead men who were harming women. Who is he to be uncomfortable just because Erik killed a man in order to protect him?

If he lets that affect him and how he feels, then he is surely being a hypocrite.

He nods resolutely to himself, and the twisting feelings that have lived in his chest dissipate like so much mist. It is with a clear eye that he looks out across the land through the back of the wagon, hears the horses softly snuffling as they crop grass, Henry’s breaths rattling slightly in his throat as he sleeps, Warren murmuring in his dreams, and sees the faint grey lightening of dawn in the distance, and sighs.

It is two days until they will arrive in El Paso. Two days until he will be reunited with Erik. And he is ready.


	25. You Go To My Head

There are select facts which Fahim keeps to the forefront of his mind: it is El Paso where they will be in the next couple of hours; it is El Paso where Erik is waiting for him; Erik has been dealing faro in the El Gran Saloon, therefore the El Gran is where Fahim is most likely to find him, and where, by necessity, his search will need to begin; before he begins looking for Erik, he must check himself into a hotel and acquire a room where he can put his things and hopefully return to later with Erik; he will also need to make certain of the arrangements for the livery where Darius will stay; it is impolite to leave Henry and Warren at the first opportunity after acquiring the hotel room; his last letter from Erik was weeks ago, and he may, even now, be in jail, have escaped from town, or, worst of all, be dead.

These are the select facts that take of all of Fahim’s attention as he rides into town, and he cannot pay any heed to his surroundings. If it were not for his great care to keep right behind the wagon, there is every possibility that he would lose it, and, consequently, lose himself in the morass of people.

It is the last of the select facts, pertaining to the worst-case scenario, that weighs the heaviest on Fahim’s mind. Suppose something has happened in the weeks since they set out from Fort Griffin? They’ve been two weeks travelling, it is perfectly within the realm of possibility. Suppose Erik lost his job? Has had to take up new employment? It could take all day and all night to find him. Suppose someone came after Erik? Recognised him from an old poster and saw through the false name? Or someone who held a grudge, whom Erik’s actions harmed once upon a time? That, too, is well within the realm of possibility, considering all the things that Erik has done, the reasons that he became notorious in the first place. Suppose he was forced to escape the town? Saddled up in the night and took off with no way of leaving a message? What then? How would Fahim ever know where to find him? Ever know where to even begin looking? Likely any tracks he left are already gone. He would be forced to wait, to wait not knowing, worrying and wondering and silently hoping, until by some miracle Erik might send a coded message in the hope of it reaching him, if Erik was even alive and well enough to send a message. Or what if the worst came to the worst? What if he was arrested? Was strung up and hanged? What if it came to blows, came to guns, and he was badly wounded or killed? He would be too late, he would never find him, never have him, everything they shared and ached desperately to have would be lost and—

And Henry’s voice is soft, makes him snap back to himself, and he realises they are at the livery, that they have stopped because Henry has taken the reins, and is looking at him now with gentle eyes. _It will be all right,_ his knitted brow seems to whisper. _It will be all right. If he’s gone we will help you find out what happened and help you find him. And if we can’t find him we’ll stay here with you until you know. You won’t be alone. You don’t have to do this alone. And if the worst has happened, we’ll help you get through that too._

So many promises in that one gaze, and Fahim feels the pounding of his heart steady, feels his breath fill his lungs as it should, and he nods at Henry, a silent thank you for helping to ground him, for bringing him back to his senses, and Henry nods back at him, his lips quirking as if they might almost smile, and he pats Darius’ neck, and holds him as Fahim swings down.

And then there are things to see to, matters demanding his attention. He settles Darius into a stall, and resolves that no matter what the position is with Erik, he will come here and take him out for a couple of hours each day, ride him to keep him exercised and in readiness, and to help in the building up of his own stamina. Warren makes arrangements for the care of the wagon and his horses until he and Henry are ready to go their own way, and then the three of them go together to find the Cottonwood Hotel, highly recommended for being both cheap and clean. Each item ticked off the list of things that needs to be seen to is one more item that brings him closer to finding Erik, and as they reach the hotel Fahim draws in a deep breath to steady himself, to re-focus. He needs to book a room, needs to bring his things up, then he can think about Erik.

The room he acquires is next door to the one that Henry and Warren take, and Henry is every inch the Southern gentleman as he informs the hotel proprietor that he and his friend intend to split the cost of the room between them, and it is no issue if there is only one bed, they are quite practiced at economising. And then he gives the man a polite smile, and when the man nods, and reaches for a key, Fahim can barely contain his snort at the thought of the two of them pretending to be anything other than what they are. He knows he is not imagining it when he sees Warren’s lips twitch.

Stairs are still a minor trial, and Warren insists on carrying Fahim’s valise so that he doesn’t strain himself. It is on the tip of Fahim’s tongue to protest that he is more than capable, but Henry gives him a withering glance, and instead of protesting he nods and murmurs a quiet word of gratitude.

They get upstairs, and he opens his room and tells Warren to dump his valise on the floor, intending to deal with it later, after he finds Erik. Every additional minute now is like some terrible form of torture, keeping him away from Erik, making the pain twist deeper in his chest, the anticipation, the longing, the fear that something might have happened, that he might be too late, and he turns to the door, ready to start out straightaway, to find the El Gran and hopefully find Erik, when Henry blocks his path and gives him a stern look.

“If you think I’m going to let you look for your man looking like some cowhand who hasn’t seen a bath in longer than he can remember, then you are sorely wrong.” He taps Fahim’s chin, the stubble that he hasn’t shaved in several days, and his frown deepens. “You are going to bathe, and shave, and put on your good suit, and maybe eat something, and then you can look for him.”

Fahim is strong enough, more than strong enough, that he can push Henry out of his way and commence his search, but Henry’s gaze is unwavering, and Warren is standing behind him, looking equally severe, and knowing he is outnumbered, knowing that what Henry says is only the truth and he really should take the time to clean up, he sighs, and acquiesces.

* * *

 

The wait is interminable, for Henry to declare him satisfactorily tidy (and he is loath to admit just how very refreshed he feels after the bath, and the warm shave, and the trimming of his hair.) It is Henry who sits him down in front of the mirror back at the hotel, and slicks down his hair, fighting the inevitable wave that tries to spring back into it now that it is clean. And it is Henry who fixes his cravat, a soft dove grey to go with his suit, then leans back and studies him critically.

“There’s something missing,” he murmurs, and Warren comes to stand beside him, frowning too at Fahim. He tilts his head in contemplation, and makes a little noise, then looks at Henry, and smiles.

“Where, may I ask, did you put that emerald stickpin I won in that game in Cheyenne last spring?”

A sudden light comes into Henry’s eyes, and a smile twitches at his lips. “I’ll be back in just a moment.” He’s gone before Fahim can even gape, and Warren sighs, and leans back against the mirror, arms folded.

“If he finds it, you can keep it.” He nods, and before Fahim can protest adds, “it suits your complexion a great deal more than either of ours.” A faint look of horror crosses his face, and Fahim stifles a laugh, fighting the anxiety that is bubbling up afresh now that he is this close to looking for Erik. “Oh, God I sound like Henry.”

“Well, I’m sure it was bound to happen eventually.” It is a struggle for Fahim to keep his voice level, and Warren breaks into one of his rare smiles that seem to light up his whole face.

“I’m sure it was.”

And then Henry is back, holding the stickpin triumphantly, and with infinite care he adds it to Fahim’s cravat. He stands back to observe his work, and Warren nods.

“Very handsome.”

Fahim’s eyes slide to the mirror, and Warren offers his hand, pulls him to his feet. The full effect of himself, in his finest suit, the stickpin glittering under the light, adding a shine to his eyes that he doesn’t remember ever seeing before, is enough to make his heart stutter. What will Erik think to see him? Will he even recognise him?

Warren pats his arm, and Henry passes him his hat. “He will never be able to resist you. I’m certain of it.”

* * *

 

It is only afterwards, only when Henry has passed him suitably dapper to go out, that it dawns on Fahim that he has no idea where the El Gran Saloon is. How could he have forgotten to find out? It should have been the first thing he checked! It was in fact the first thing he had _intended_ to check and then he got swept up in booking the hotel room and it all slipped his mind. His palms are just beginning to sweat when Warren rolls his eyes.

“Lucky for you, one of us had the foresight to find out where you’re supposed to go.”

Before he can make any sort of reply, can thank Warren for anticipating his oversight, Warren has taken his left arm, and Henry has presented him with his cane, and the two of them have marched him out the door.

Out the door and down the stairs into the street.

His heart is pounding fast with nervous anticipation, with anxiety and fear and excitement and longing and a thousand different things that leave him faintly lightheaded, and he is grateful for Warren’s strong grip on his arm, grateful for Henry beside him. He is in too much of a daze to pay much attention to where they are going, only knows that it isn’t far because next thing they have stopped before a building.

The sun dipping below the horizon in the distance lights the sign up golden.

El Gran Saloon.

His heart is in throat and his mouth is dry, his stomach doing somersaults, as he pushes the door open.

And for a long minute he is overwhelmed by the size of the crowd. Warren’s hand disappears from his arm, Henry vanishes from his side, and he leans heavy on his cane to get his breath, eyes combing that crowd for something, anything, some sign that might be just vaguely familiar enough to whisper of Erik.

There is a throng of people by the bar, but none of them are anywhere near tall enough to be him. And he can’t pick him out at any of the tables. Over in the back corner the crowd is especially dense, and Fahim’s heart skips. A dense crowd means gambling, and gambling means faro, and faro means _Erik_.

All at once it slots into place, and the world tilts around him, his cane almost falling away.

Erik.

He swallows, and before he has time to think about it, he’s pushing his way through, murmuring apologies and hissing when an elbow catches his ribs. A hand steadies him, and he catches sight of Henry, sees a smile of encouragement and a nod. And then he is there, before the table, the cards all laid out, and a pair of eyes raise to meet his, a question half-caught on twisted lips.

A pair of gold-hazel eyes, shining bright with the gold brocade in a burgundy waistcoat.

And as he looks down at Erik, Fahim’s eyes water, and the fear that has lived in his heart for weeks dies away, is replaced with relief that leaves him weak.

He smiles.

* * *

 

Afterwards, when they are away from the crowd, when they have retreated back to Fahim’s room, they will kiss. They will kiss and cry and hold each other, and whisper softly in the darkness in between. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.” “I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.” They will breathe of news, queries, promises, relief, the feeling of dreaming now that they are finally together, and their lips will meet as they lie together, swallowing words, swallowing sighs, swallowing the taste of each other, each of them seeking comfort in their bodies pressed together, in skin on skin, though they will be too wrung out for anything more, satisfied in simply having each other, here, now, in the soft glow of the gaslight.

And Fahim will cradle Erik’s head, and Erik will kiss the silver ring on Fahim’s finger, and they will worm their way under the sheets, will leave the light on, neither willing to disentangle himself for the bare minute to turn it off. And there, the light filtering through the white, they will have each other, a cocoon just for themselves, safe from the gazes of the rest of the world.

But now is not the time for that. All of it will have to wait until they are away from prying eyes, away from the crowd. And when the smile curves Fahim’s lips, Erik smiles back at him, and nudges the cards on the table, all part of his act.

“What’s your bet, sir?”

And in those simple words, the future unfolds.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Edge of Sleep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16868983) by [ponderinfrustration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration)
  * [Forever](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17742815) by [ponderinfrustration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration)
  * [Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17875220) by [ponderinfrustration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration)




End file.
